GradLeaders Partners with Paragon One to Connect Students with Industry Insiders in Dream Careers

DUBLIN, Ohio - Oct. 2, 2018 - PRLog -- Paragon One, a career accelerator that pairs job-seeking students with experienced industry insiders in their desired career field, announced today a partnership with GradLeaders, a campus-recruitment and career-services technology leader with more than 30 years of experience connecting more than 26.5 million students with their dream jobs. Through the partnership, Paragon One will expand its reach to GradLeaders partner schools and current students at schools like Columbia, Yale, Texas A&M, DeVry, Oregon, and California State University. Together they will help students assess their skills, interests, and career aspirations to match them with a curated list of industry experts that will provide the personalized virtual guidance they need to take the next step in their career.

"We're really excited about our exclusive new partnership with Paragon One because it will instantly expand our partner schools' professional network of industry experts and help their students gain invaluable insight from people with real-world work experience as successful entrepreneurs and leaders at highly sought-after employers like Bain & Company, Deloitte, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Google, Microsoft, Tesla, News Corp, PWC and more," said Ryan Pratt, Vice President of Marketing and Research at GradLeaders. "For decades, GradLeaders has been the industry leader providing technology to help thousands of career centers around the world manage the services provided by their office. But over the past few years, we've expanded our platform to include innovative new tools to help schools virtually guide students to right-fit career pathways. Paragon One will be another invaluable resource in their job search tool belts."

Paragon One will start by offering every student at GradLeaders' partner schools a personalized career assessment and advisor matching based on their career goals, interests, education, and work experience. In addition, students who complete a career assessment will have access to a video library of industry insider advice for successfully navigating their internship and/or job search. Paragon One advisors are industry experts in a variety of fields including finance, management, strategic consulting, marketing, advertising, data science, software development, product management, and entrepreneurial startups. These advisors help students discover their passions and strengths and explore best-fit career options and prepares them to ace interviews at target companies and find employment in their desired career path.

"Our mission at Paragon One is to enable and motivate college students and recent graduates to understand themselves, improve, and secure their best-fit career opportunity,' said Matt Wilkerson, Co-founder and CEO at Paragon One.  Matt previously worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, venture capital at Technology Crossover Ventures, and security consulting at Ernst & Young, in addition to co-founding AHAlife.com, a luxury e-commerce marketplace.  "After graduating, I realized how disconnected my school's alumni network was with the current student population, so I helped start a mentorship organization. The goal was to create a deeper connection between alumni professionals and students. When I saw how students benefited immensely from these connections as they launched their careers, it inspired us to create Paragon One and bring the strength of professional networks to students everywhere."  Today, Paragon One has built an expansive community of nearly 600 experienced, successful professionals who are true industry insiders and ready to help students achieve their career goals. They've helped over 97% of their students find jobs or mentorships.

Shelley Zheng, a recent Penn State graduate, utilized Paragon One and received internship offers in Industrial Engineering and IoT from Tesla and Hitachi America. "I was raised in China, and it was very challenging when I came to America. Most of my friends were not able to get jobs as international students. I was very lucky to land an engineering position with coaching and help from Paragon One. The industry advisors and coaches are resourceful, and they helped me a lot while I was applying for internships."

Leo Lien, a recent New York University graduate, leveraged the coaching and mentorship from his CareerMapper program to land an internship at PwC, and negotiate his full-time position with the firm. He shared that his Paragon One advisors helped him "navigate the first few steps of starting a career. They were real people with real-world experience whose advice was critical to my growth. Even today, they still have a positive impact on my professional career and personal life."

GradLeaders school partners will be able to offer this new service to their job-seeking students as part of the Career Network Co-registration tool starting October 1, 2018. Paragon One expects more than 10,000 students to sign up each month for the free assessment and advisor matching.


About GradLeaders:

GradLeaders is the result of a merger between two student-recruitment and career-services technology providers, MBA Focus and CSO Research. Combined over the last 30 years, we have helped connect over 26,500,000 students from more than 1,000 career centers to their dream jobs at more than 100,000 companies around the world. Our exclusive school partnerships, extensive campus recruiting network, and industry-leading software solutions, make us the number-one choice of schools seeking to increase employment outcomes and companies seeking right-fit student talent to join their team. https://www.gradleaders.com


About Paragon One:

Paragon One is a career accelerator that simplifies the path from college to career.  After assessing students' skills, interests, and strengths, they are matched with a curated list of coaches, industry experts and peers, and receive the personalized guidance necessary to find the right career after college. We have helped 97% of our students land an internship or job in the field of their interest while connecting them with nearly 600 expert industry advisors.  Paragon One has been featured in Forbes, NPR, CNBC, and Yahoo! Finance, and is backed by YCombinator, University Ventures, Learn Capital, and Foundation Capital. https://www.paragonone.com/