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Inviting Contacts to Become Users: Standard Employer Invite Process

Tawnya
  • Updated

Individuals who are included in Handshake as Contacts, but not Users, cannot engage with your students, post jobs or request interviews, until they have an account on Handshake AND get approved by your institution. To learn more about the difference between Handshake Contacts and Users, refer to Contacts vs. Users. 

Inviting your employer contacts to become Handshake users is the fastest way to proactively get employers to connect with your institution and maximise the benefits of your student-employer relationships.

Note: If the invited contact has a user profile attached to it, and the user is approved by a company, the employer invite will automatically approve them at that institution. If the contact does NOT have a user profile attached to it, they will be prompted to sign up for Handshake and connect or create their company. From there, they will have to find the institution and request to recruit there.  

 

Inviting Contacts 

To send a bulk invite to your employer contacts to become users, follow the steps below.

1. Click Contacts on the left hand Navigation bar. This will bring up the list of all your contacts.

  • At this point you can invite ALL your contacts, or select individual checkboxes or use filters to narrow down who you're inviting. You can even invite one user if you'd like.


2. Once you've selected the desired contacts, click on the bulk action More that appears above the list of contacts, and click on Invite Employer Contacts. 

Invite employer contacts button on Contacts Overview page.png

 

3. A pop-up will appear summarising the total number of contacts invited. Click Invite employer contacts if you are satisfied with the count of invites to be sent. 

Confirm inviting contacts.png

Note: If you have not set your institution's default employer approval setting when you created your institution profile, you will receive a pop up notification reminding you to do so before sending out your bulk email invite. By taking this proactive step, all contacts, when they create an account in Handshake, will automatically send an approval request to connect with you.  If approved, they will be granted the default permissions (roles) at your university. To learn more about how to set your institution's default employer approval settings, refer to Institution Settings: Default Employer Approval Preferences.
4. Once you've confirmed, you'll be taken to a page that displays a summary (including a demographic breakdown) of your bulk invite.
Bulk Invite and invitation demographics page.png
5. Click the blue button Send under Actions in lower left corner of the screen. This will bring you to a page showing updated invitation demographics and employer actions taken.

After sending the bulk invite.png

Note: Once you send the invite, one of three things will occur for each contact:
1) Contacts without a Handshake account will receive an email invite to create an account on Handshake and to join your institution.  
2) Contacts with an account on Handshake, but not associated with your institution, will automatically be approved at your institution and granted your default permissions.
3) Contacts with an account on Handshake who are connected with your institution will not get an email at all. 

Pro-Tip: Label invited contacts 

A good way to keep track of which contacts have been previously invited is to apply a label to those contacts. You can create a label for the invite date, i.e. "invited 10/18/19", then apply it to contacts invited on that day. 

You can use this label as a filter on the Manage Contacts page as well as in the Contacts Explore in Insights. 

Viewing past Bulk Invites

To view your bulk invites at anytime, click on your name in the upper-right corner of your screen, then click on Institution Settings. From the menu on the left of this page, click Bulk Invites. 
Bulk Invites button in School Settings.png
From this page, you can open up the invites to view employer actions taken, including how many employers were approved.

 

Contact Invite Emails:

The same basic content is included in all invite emails, however, the text on the button will change depending on the status of the user in Handshake. 

If Handshake does not recognise the user's email, we will ask them to create an account. 

contact_invite_no_account.png

If Handshake recognises the user's email, but they have not yet joined their company, the button will read "Join Company".  

If Handshake recognises the user's email and sees that they are tied to a company, then the invite automatically adds your institution to the employer's institutions and approves the company (if it wasn't already approved). In this email, the button will read "Log In".