Education firm EAB reaches agreement to acquire Forage, a provider of virtual job simulations

Forage, an Australian startup that helps students move from study to the workforce with virtual job simulations, is being acquired by US-based education firm EAB.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close in the coming weeks.

“Our corporate partners have shared how challenging and time-consuming it is to hire interns and recent college graduates, especially students from historically underserved groups or campuses where companies lack a physical recruiting presence,” says EAB Chief Executive Officer David Felsenthal. 

“By joining forces with Forage, we can connect employers to a robust pipeline of diverse students, and provide the ten million college students we work with better access to career opportunities and a deep understanding of what those options look like in the real world.”

Students worldwide use Forage to experience what it is like to be an accountant, investment banker, software engineer, and more through free online courses designed by companies such as Citibank, Goldman Sachs, KPMG, and Lululemon.

 Forage’s interactive job simulations expose students to different career paths, build skills related to specific roles, and prepare students for interviews.

The company says that its corporate customers "benefit at every stage of the recruitment process, from building global brand awareness to improving recruitment funnel efficiency to filling hard-to-recruit early-career roles". 

Companies are more than twice as likely to hire students who take their simulations than those who do not, and nearly 20% of participating employers’ early-talent hires are students who have used Forage, it claims.

“With EAB, Forage can connect employers with a vast network of future candidates at critical points throughout their college journeys,” says Forage Co-founder and CEO Tom Brunskill. 

“I am especially excited to embed Forage’s virtual job simulations in Navigate360 and Starfish, EAB’s student success technologies, which will connect millions of students from a wide variety of schools with the world’s leading companies.”

Forage simulations are free and available on demand, which makes them accessible to students for whom a traditional internship is not possible. Nearly 40% of US students who use its platform say they are the first in their families to attend college.

Forage’s job simulations will complement the other talent solutions in EAB’s Seramount division.