InternMatch raises $4 million Series A

Online platform is dedicated to matching students to the right internship at the right company

Back in my college days, every summer I had maybe a week, two at the most, before I heard the dreaded words from my mother, "You are not going to just sit around all summer and do nothing!" So off to the computer I would go, to try and find an internship; something that would give me some experience, a few lines on my resume and, if I was really lucky, some money too (I don't think I ever got that lucky).

But, as any student can tell, you finding an internship is a giant pain. For me it meant combing through pages and pages of Craiglist ads, applying for anything I thought I could get, most of which I really did not even want to do. There was no service out there to help me find anything; I was on my own, lost in a sea of terrible, terrible jobs.

I wish I had something along the lines of InternMatch, an online platform for students to find the right internships for them. The company has now raised a $4 million Series A round of funding, it was announced Tuesday.

The round was led by Artis Ventures and Subtraction Capital, and included new investments fromprevious investors 500 Startups, Kapor Capital, Rudy Gadre and others. The new funding brings InternMatch's total raised to $6 million, after a $2 million seed round. 

InternMatch will use the funding to expand their team, which will include building out the tech and sales teams, InternMatch CEO Andrew Maguire told me in an interview. 

The money will also go toward continuing to build the marketplace, and investing in developing data powered technology. 

In addition to the new funding, InternMatch has also announced the addition of Paul Willard, the CMO of Atlassian, to the board of directors.

InternMatch is a platform that helps students find good internships, and employers find the right interns.

"From the student perspective, getting a job is important," Maguire said. "80% of college students will have an internship, but there is too much of a disconnect, and they are not being exposed to a broad enough range of choices."

And from the employer side, recruiting candidates can be expensive.

"They can go to 10, maybe 30 different schools, but more employers simply cannot afford more than that," said Maguire.

And that is the problem that he is trying to solve with InternMatch, which allows employers to reach a broader audience, and one that is targeted to their needs, by "crafting a unique message to college students." In addition, larger companies are able to create content rich profiles called Campus Hubs, where they showcase unqiue content for underclassmen, interns, new grads and diverse students.

And for students, InternMatch offers a simple way to search for roles, discover company profiles, save positions and easily apply. InternMatch also has extensive resources on how to prepare for internships and jobs including resume guides, building a brand on social media and more.

Right now, InternMatch is seeing more than 650,000 unique students each month, a number that has doubled in the past four months, and more than 150,000 applications, a number that has quadrupled in this same time. The company seems to have a lot of traction, as it is adding half a million students a month, and 300 new companies every week, according to Maguire. 

Some of the companies that use the service include Google, Nestle Purina, and Viacom.

Of course, there are already places online to go find internships, including LinkedIn. So what separates InternMatch?

InternMatch uses rich media, including video, pictures and a newsfeed, to really give students the idea of what it is like to work in a specific company, said Maguire, but, beyond that, services like LinkedIn simply do not cater to students well.

"These students do not have an existing network, and the one on LinkedIn is not as relevant to them," Maguire said.

The goal of InternMatch is to use specific data to try to match up the right student with the right company through targeting. 

For example, if a student is looking for a position in engineering, InternMatch will be able to compare the behavior of other similar students, and use clustering to find a job where there is a high probability of a match.

Founded in 2009, Soma, California-based InternMatch is free for students, and makes its money by charging employers an annual subscription that is based on which of four different categories they wish to cater to: underclassmen, interns, graduates and diversity, which helps them target underrepresented groups, be it by enthinicity or gender.

The ultimate goal of InternMatch is to "challenge the established marketplace," Maguire told me.

"A lot will be changing in the recruiting space. There has not been much distruption since the classified ad became the online job listing."

You can find out more about InternMatch's Campus Hubs in the video below: