Best Practices: Add a Comment on Job and Employer Approvals

When processing Job Postings or Job Postings from New Employers and either:

• Don't feel like you have enough information to approve
• Want to ensure that you're communicating your employer guidelines efficiently

You can always use the comment feature to notify the employer or request more information. This option exists on both an individual job posting and on the company profile page.

This article will outline how to add a comment and a few example canned responses you can send.

How to add a comment

Note: if declining an employer or job, you'll be prompted for a decline reason, which will be added as a comment as well. More information is available in Processing Employer Approval Requests and Using Job Decline Reasons.

1. Navigate to the Job or Employer Approvals list view by clicking Jobs or Employers from the left navigation bar in Handshake, then select the posting or company. 

2. Review the details (and add a comment) if you determine that you:

• Need more more information about the employer
• Want to share your employer guidelines
• Want to provide reasoning why you're declining

3. After typing your comment, click the blue button Add Comment to save. This will send a notification to the employer who requested approval to connect or post a job.

The comment will then display in the comment log, along with any responses or follow-ups from the employer. 

Note: In order to receive updates when an employer comments back on this approval page, you will have to set an "assigned to" for a Career Services staff member. This staff member will then receive updates that come through the notifications queue at the top of the page.

Viewing Employer Comments on Job and Employer Approvals

If you receive notification that an employer has commented on a job or employer approval, you can click on the link in the notification to pull up that specific job posting or company profile page.

On the page toward the upper-middle is a section with a small arrow pointing down. You'll need to click on this arrow in order to expand the section and view the comment history.

Example "Canned" Comments

Keep in mind, these are only templates - tailor this copy to the needs and high priority workflows of your institution.

Approved + acknowledgement of posting guidelines

Thank you for your interest in recruiting our top talent at {insert institution name} We look forward to connecting with you! We value your campus partnership, and have provisioned your company with the following roles:

{default approval roles here}

Please keep the following guidelines in mind as you engage with {insert institution name} students and alumni {insert posting guidelines here}

Let us know if you have any additional questions

Thank you,

{Employer Relations team contact}

Missing profile information

Thank you for your interest in recruiting our top talent at the {insert institution name} We require a few things before approving a company registration in Handshake at {institution name}. 

1. An email address associated with your employer/organisation website domain (no Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc). Individual contact names and email addresses should match whenever appropriate. 
2. A functioning website that clearly relates to your employer/organisation and contains helpful information about your company for the potential applicant; website should not be in a pre-launch/beta phase nor contain "coming soon" language. 
3. Social media websites (Facebook pages, blogs, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn pages, etc.) should not take the place of a company website. 
4. An employer/organisation address that is easily identifiable as a place of business

When you are able to provide each of these, we're happy to revisit your registration in Handshake @ {institution name} 

Thank you,

{Employer Relations team contact}

Does not align with institution posting guidelines

Thank you for your interest in recruiting our top talent at the {insert institution name}.

Given our mission to {insert mission here (help students find meaningful careers) etc} our office can only approve postings that adhere to {include employer/institutional job posting guidelines or link here} and cannot approve your posting/company at this time.

Let us know if you have any additional questions,

Thank you,

{Employer Relations team contact}

Didn't have a chance to approve job before posting expired

Typically you'll want to get to Employer approvals within ~1 week, and should absolutely approve postings before your student launch date. However, even with all of that, the employer volume can be quite high during the first few weeks after your employer launch. Use this template to buy  time without damaging any new employer relationships:

Hi there!

We're so glad that you requested to connect and post your position @ {institution name}

We haven't had a chance to approve your posting yet because we're focusing much of our efforts on  student launch date on {student launch date here} We want to ensure that students have the best possible experience on Handshake, and are confident this will in turn drive application rates to your future positions.

For now, we are going to decline this expired position while we work through our queue of pending postings, but please keep us in mind for your next open posting.

Let us know if you have any additional questions,

Thank you,

{Employer Relations team contact}

Other Ideas?

Do you have different canned responses that you use to build employer relationships? We recommend asking for tips in the Handshake EDU Community! This is the perfect place to ask other institutions on Handshake for their knowledge in this area, and more! Find out how to access the Community at the following article: Community: Guidelines.