Managing Multi-Institution Fairs in Handshake

You can share a fair with other institutions on Handshake by following the steps in this resource.

Before sharing a fair in Handshake, it's important to clearly identify your sharing goals with the other institutions, and understand the sharing settings within Handshake fairs. Without both of those addressed, it's possible to end up with an unintended result, such as students being unable to view or register for the fair. 

Topics: 

• Share a fair with another institution or Handshake Open Network
  • Share your fair with the Handshake Open Network
  • Invite a specific institution to participate in your fair
  • Share an Invite-only fair with other institutions
  • Handshake Partnered Institution
  • Inviting specific students
• Fair situation, setting selection, and student outcome matrix 
  • To help clarify expectations, we've mapped goals, sharing settings, and student outcomes in a chart at the end of this article. 
• Post Career Fair Reporting 
• Post Employer and Student Surveys

Share a fair with another institution or Handshake Open Network

For additional guidance, check out our blog post 5 Tips for Hosting a Multi-Institution Virtual Fair on Handshake!

Share your fair with the Handshake Open Network

If you'd like your fair to be discoverable to the Handshake Open Network (verified students that go to a institution that hasn't partnered with us yet, please make sure to check Make available to ALL non-Handshake institutions, located on the "Edit" tab of your fair. 

To discover the fair while browsing (without the fair link), the filter "Only posted by my institution" must be toggled off on the student event search page.

Note: you won't be able to share an event or fair with only the Handshake Open Network, or a specific institution within the network, so if you mark this setting, it'll be discoverable by all students. 

Note: profile information isn't imported for students in the Handshake Open Network, so some students may be missing data, e.g. level of study, college, course etc. As such, please be aware of any qualifications you set for your fair, as these could restrict students from registering. 

Invite a specific institution to participate in your fair

If you'd like students at another Handshake-partnered institution to be able to participate in your fair, you can invite that institution using this process. Co-hosts will be able to use Handshake tools to view registered employers, invite and email their students, and download their attendee info.

1. From the fair's overview page, click the blue button Add Institutions, located under the "Partnering with other institutions?" header.

2. This will take you to the Invited Institutions tab within the Edit section of the Career Fair. Click on Add Institution in the upper-right corner of that page. 

3. Select the desired institution you'd like to invite to the career fair from the dropdown, then check the box to confirm that you have connected with the institution and have their approval to proceed.

Click Invite to post the fair to the institution.

• Note for inviting Open institutions: If you’re unable to find the non-Handshake partnered institution when inviting institutions, you can reach out to our Support Team! The Support Team will be able to assist you with your request. Just provide a link to the fair as well as the name of the institution(s) you’d like to invite to this fair, and our Support Team will assist you shortly.

4. After inviting the desired institution(s), we recommend the host institution send out comms reminding the invited institutions to:

• review/approve all employers based on the registrations list.
• monitor for new employer registrations before the fair, if the employer registration window is still open. 
• Utilise the Co-hosting a Multi-institution Fair in Handshake resource for additional information.

Employers that have registered for the fair need to be approved at each institution for employer users to message/connect with the institutions students.

Share an Invite-only fair with other institutions

If you'd like to share an invite-only fair (virtual or in-person) with other institutions, you'll need to make sure the fair is marked as "Invite-only" within the Edit tab of the fair, then follow the steps below depending on the other institution(s)'s Handshake partnership status. 

Handshake-partnered institution

Make sure you have invited the institution via the Invite Institution process described above.

Co-hosts from the invited institution can use the "Invite Students" button from the fair overview page to invite their students. Alternatively, they can share a unique Student Preview Link with their students (steps described below). Since the fair is marked as "Invite-only", students will be unable to view the fair unless they have been invited or have the fair preview link. 

Co-hosts can also use the "Email Student Attendees" button to communicate with their students about the fair. For steps, refer to Email Event or Fair Attendees. 

Inviting specific students

1. Make sure that the following fair setting is checked (selected) in the Edit tab of the fair: "Make available to ALL non-Handshake institutions". Even though this setting is marked, the fair is not discoverable to any student on Handshake without the student preview link!

• • Note: please consider any qualifications you set for the fair, as these could restrict students from registering - profile information isn't imported for students in the Handshake Open Network, so some students may be missing data, e.g. level of study, college, course etc. 

2. Copy the Student Preview Link, located on the left of the fair overview page. In order for Open students to view and register for the fair, they must have the fair's student preview link.

• Troubleshooting tip: if the generic fair link (not student preview link) is shared instead, students will receive an error: "You do not have permission to do that. Please contact the Handshake team or your local administrator."
  • Follow this step to share the Student Preview Link with them, and that should resolve the issue!

Best Practice 1 of 2: After you copy the link, before sharing it out, paste the link to confirm the correct link has been copied. The link should be similar to this one copied from our demo environment: https://joinhandshake-demo.com/career_fairs/3764/student_preview?token=8Gr_KyWT4Fr-8CZrmmzySs2uCBndGRjDCg_QhXrtxU8W5d6f18ifng 

In your link, your institution's Handshake link will be included, along with the fair ID, followed by "student_preview" and the invite token, as shown below:

Best Practice 2 of 2: If you’re sharing the fair link with a non-partner institution, update the fair link so that it begins with “app.joinhandshake.co.uk” instead of your institution specific link. This leads to Handshake’s generic login page where non-partner students can sign up for an account and register for the fair.

3. Start inviting students! Because the institution has not yet partnered with Handshake, the preview link in Step 2 is required in order for students to view and register for the fair. You can reach out to the other institution(s) directly to have them advertise the link through other methods, such as website, social media, etc.

Fair situation, setting selection, and student outcome matrix 

The right fair setting selections depend on the sharing goals you as the host institution have. Different setting combinations will produce different outcomes for students, so we developed the matrix below to clarify how each of the two relevant fair settings impact potential situations (or goals) you may have. 

In both the matrix image and accessible text version below the image: 

• The left column lists possible fair situation/goals.
• The middle two columns indicate fair sharing settings selected Yes/No per situation & outcome.
  • Both settings are located in the Edit tab of your institution's fair: Make available to ALL non-Handshake institutions and Career fair is invite-only.
• The far-right column describes the student outcome and includes tips or notes as applicable.

Tip: if you'd like to make the matrix image below larger for easier viewing, right click on the image, then choose open image in a new tab!

Post Career Fair Reporting 

Invited institutions cannot report on attendees or registrants. We recommend the host institution download the Student Attendee CSV from the "Registered Students" page to share with all participating institutions.

This spreadsheet will be the best representation of overall student engagement for the fair and will include:  

• All the students who registered for the fair.
  
• Of the students who registered, how many "checked-in". We count a student as "checked-in" if they attended at least one session. If it shows a "no" under the check-in column, this means the student didn't attend any sessions/fair.
  
• Of the students who registered, how many 1:1 and Group sessions did they sign up for.
  
• Of the students who registered for the fair and signed up for sessions (both 1:1 and Group), how many did they attend? You can identify this by comparing the number of signups a student had vs their number of "no shows".
  

Post Employer and Student Surveys