PowerToFly Acquires Upskilling Platform Skillcrush

PowerToFly, a leader in talent management for diverse professionals, has acquired Skillcrush, an education platform focused on technical upskilling for underrepresented groups. This strategic move enhances PowerToFly’s offerings, which include employer branding, AI-led hiring, and professional skill development. The acquisition brings together AI-led candidate matching and extensive training programs, catering to over 20 million diverse profiles. PowerToFly hosts numerous live and virtual events to connect candidates with employers. The combined capabilities of PowerToFly and Skillcrush aim to address skill gaps, promote diversity, and drive workforce development.

Acquisition will enhance PowerToFly’s professional skill development offerings for 20 million-plus diverse candidate profiles and partner companies.

NEW YORK, May 21, 2024  — PowerToFly, the pioneering leader in talent management for diverse professionals since 2014, announced the strategic acquisition of Skillcrush, the education platform providing technical upskilling for underrepresented professionals. The combination of Skillcrush and PowerToFly gives talent and companies even more essential tools to build the workforce of the future.

The offering rounds out PowerToFly’s holistic solution suite with employer branding, AI-led hiring solutions across 20 million diverse profiles, and technical and non-technical upskilling. We combine AI-led candidate matching across 20 million diverse profiles with hundreds of virtual and live events PowerToFly hosts annually for real-time connections. Whether professionals are missing a hard or soft skill in order to qualify for a job, or a hiring manager identifies a skill missing on their teams – they can now solve that on PowerToFly.

“Training diverse talent for the jobs of the future is a frequent conversation we have with companies and job candidates,” said PowerToFly CEO Milena Berry “With Skillcrush, we’re making accessible, inclusive technical training a reality for millions who now have a direct path to hiring managers on PowerToFly once they complete their training.” 

Founded by Adda Birnir, Skillcrush has trained more than twenty-thousand students through mentor-led flexible courses in AI, coding, design, and related fields. Over forty-nine percent of Skillcrush students identify as BIPOC and eighty percent as women. With career coaching and programming tailored to traditionally underrepresented groups, Skillcrush’s Get Hired program has placed students in technical roles at a wide range of companies, government agencies, and institutions of higher ed, with an average salary increase of over $30,000.

“As I watched PowerToFly grow to enable hires across hundreds of companies, it was obvious how the impactful training and coaching we do at Skillcrush will enhance PowerToFly’s professional skill development offerings for its over 20 million diverse candidate profiles. I am particularly excited to bring Skillcrush to PowerToFly’s partner companies,” said Adda Birnir, founder and CEO of Skillcrush.

Supporting Growth Goals for Diverse Talent and Companies:

Homogenous teams and lack of training are a double threat to innovation at workplaces.  Today’s talent and hiring managers are requiring the combination of AI-led recruiting with skills matching and live events that PowerToFly and Skillcrush will provide together. Beginning May 2024, PowerToFly and Skillcrush enable:

• Inclusive AI-led Talent Matching Across 20 Million Diverse Profiles through PowerPro: Recruiters leverage transparent AI Matching software, to instantly generate a tailored list of candidates whose resumes closely match their open roles.  PowerPro includes pre-ATS talent analytics to manage candidate pipelines through recruiting stages, messaging and outreach.
• Skills Training for Workforce Development and Employee Retention: With net positive job growth, along with nearly a quarter of jobs changing in the next five years according to the World Economic Forum, PowerToFly and Skillcrush will be able to deliver workforce development for internal mobility.
• Hundreds of Live and Virtual Hiring Events To Center the Human Experience First: As PowerToFly and Skillcrush focus on outcomes for underrepresented talent, real-time interactions are essential for insuring the innovations fostered by AI-led talent matching are responsible, effective, and beneficial to both talent and companies. A list of upcoming PowerToFly events, including summits that have drawn over ten thousand attendees, can be found here.
• Robust DEI, Leadership Development, and Hard Skills Training: PowerToFly already delivers expert-led DEI and leadership upskilling via live and on-demand courses. Try PowerUp for free. With Skillcrush our upskilling capabilities extend to generative AI, frontend, backend, digital marketing, and design skills courses to fill skills gaps for the talent community and employees.

About PowerToFly

PowerToFlywas founded by Milena Berry and Katharine Zaleski in 2014 to fast-track economic equity by upskilling and connecting underrepresented talent to roles in highly visible sectors. The company is focused on empowering underrepresented talent across all races, ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, abilities, veteran statuses, and gender identities. Allies are welcomed.

A full list of companies on the PowerToFly platform can be found here.

About Skillcrush

Founded in 2012 by Adda Birnir, Skillcrush has trained over twenty thousand students through a community of students, alumni, and instructors. With a focus on women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, people without college degrees, parents, caretakers, and returning talent, Skillcrush has tailored hundreds of hours of successful programming towards underrepresented talent.