Follow this system setup checklist and workflow guide to make sure that you are ready for on-campus interviews this academic year. This guide will help you configure your institution settings and how you will manage on-campus interviews to ensure positive experiences for both employers and students.
Step 1: Configure your Interview Institution Settings in Handshake
*Note: If you are a University that has multiple career centres set-up in Handshake, each career centre will need to configure the following institution settings.
Set Your Interview Preferences
- Interview Preferences are settings that you will configure such as room cost, room capacity, number of rooms you have available, and the option to enable room capacity management. For more information and guidance in configuring your interview preferences, refer to Institution Settings: Interview Preferences.
Best Practice: Turn on room capacity management to make sure only available rooms are requested and decide on room availability in advance
Configure Your Interview Seasons
- Interview seasons are the time of the year in which your institution will host employers on campus for interviews. You will set the name of the season, start and end dates of when schedules can be created, and when interviews can take place. For more information and guidance on setting your interview seasons, refer to Institution Settings: Interview Seasons and Preferences.
Best Practice: Set interview seasons if you only want employers to be a able to schedule interviews certain times during the year
Set Your Interview Timelines:
- Interview timelines allow you to choose a timeline for the interview process and the type of interview schedules you have available to employers. For more information and guidance on interview timelines, refer to Institution Settings: Interview Schedule Timelines.
Create Your Interview Schedule Templates:
- Interview Schedule templates allow you to configure slots which will be built in one click when approving your interview schedules. These will show up as options for employers when they are requesting on campus interviews with you.
Best Practice: If you’re a distributed campus - ensure all your career centres have completed all interview settings.
Best Practice: Double-check interview schedule before mass creating slots
Ensure your staff has watched the interview schedule training
- Access the training videos by clicking “Help” > “Handshake Academy” in Handshake, or webinars by going to this direct link: Handshake Academy.
Step 2: Tips for Managing your Interview Schedules
Workflow Tip 1: Understand your options for launching check-in kiosks for interview schedules:
1. Launching a general check-in kiosk: Students see a list of all room only interview schedules happening that day and any non-room only interview schedules they are signed up for.
To launch this type of general kiosk Go to your “Events” tab, click “Check-In Kiosk”.
2. Launch a kiosk for a specific interview: This will only allow students to check-in for a specific interview schedule
To launch this type of kiosk Click “Interviews” on left toolbar > “Approved” > open the correct interview schedule > click “Open Check-in Kiosk”
Workflow Tip 2: If you have career centre enabled, make sure you are using saved searches to only view the appropriate interview schedules for your centre:
Workflow Tip 3: Use room capacity management to blackout certain dates:
- Blackout certain days in which you are not hosting on-campus interviews. Employers will only see and be able to sign up for the available rooms left for a given day; if the room is set to 0, then they will not be able to pick that date.
Workflow Tip 4: Make sure you’re ready for employers on campus
- Over communicate with high priority employers
- Be prepared to answer their questions - for additional information, use Supporting Your Employers: Employer FAQs.
Best Practice: Confirm schedule and logistics at least a week in advance. Let employer know they can only change availability, interviewers in the room, interview group or job, and check if student can check in.
Workflow Tip 5: Use Bulk actions to edit interview slots
- When editing or changing an interview schedule that is already built, it is best to use bulk actions to make any tweaks or updates. You can update the rooms assigned to your slots, update times, add a student to a specific slot, and much more.
Workflow Tip 6: Download daily interview schedule overview
- This download will give you an overview of each interview happening that day and the room in which that interview is assigned.
Additional Resources: