Processing Employer Approval Requests

This resource provides step-by-step instructions to help you process employer requests to connect at your institution in Handshake. 

For tips navigating approvals, refer to Best Practices: Employer Approvals and Best Practices: Tips for Vetting Employers on Handshake. 

Topics: 

• Accessing pending employer approval requests
• Approving an employer
• Declining an employer
• Employer request outcome notifications

Accessing pending employer approval requests

To process employer approval requests for your institution, follow the steps below.

1. Determine which employers are requesting approval (employers with a status of pending have requested, but not yet received, approval to connect with your institution).

There are two ways to access pending employer requests: 

• Click Employers from the left navigation bar to be directed to the Manage Employers page, then select the Pending tab.
  • Note: In the left navigation bar, the number to the right of Employers indicates the number of requests pending.
• Click Home at the top of the left navigation bar to be taken to your home page; the right side of your homepage highlights items needing your attention. Scroll down to Employer Approvals and click the link for "employers are waiting for approval".

2. Once you’ve used one of these methods to determine which employers are awaiting approval from your institution, you’re ready to determine whether or not to grant approval to each employer.

Handshake displays information to help you make this decision:  

• • Trust Score: a number assigned based on employer engagement in Handshake
    • To learn more about Handshake's Trust Score, refer to Safety: Employer Trust Score.
  • Approvals: how many institutions have approved this employer to date 
  • Declines: how many institutions have declined this employer
  • Website: for quick reference, instead of having to go to the company profile
  • Date Requested: when the employer requested access to your institution
  • Hover over the triangular alert icon to see other relevant information, such as an unconfirmed email, a non-matching domain, no job postings yet, etc.

Tip: If you’d like to contact the employer directly to discuss their approval request, click the employer’s name to view the company profile, then locate the Contact Information section on the left side. 

3. Now that you've evaluated the pending employer, you're ready to process the request.

• Use the three dots on the far right to quickly Email Employer Contacts, Add or Remove Labels, Edit Roles, Assign (the employer) to Me, or Set to In Progress.

To approve or decline the request, you can take action from the list view or from the company profile: 

• Use the Yes/No buttons to Approve/Decline individual employers from the list view:
• To Approve/Decline two or more employers, click the checkboxes to the left of the employer names, then use the bulk action in the column header More, and choose Approve or Decline:
• When viewing a company profile, you can use the action items in the Employer Approval section to process a pending request, or update an existing Approved/Declined employer. Click the desired button for Status: Declined, In Progress, Approved

Approving an employer

From the list view, when you click Yes or Approve Employer Approvals, a popup will appear prompting you to select roles to assign to the employer. If you have default roles selected in your Institution Settings, those will automatically be selected, but you can add or remove roles from this popup as well. Mark the desired selections, then click Approve.

On the company profile, after selecting a status button, select the desired roles, then click Save.

Declining an employer

When you decline an employer, you'll be prompted to submit a reason for the decline. This prompt improves the process by: 

• capturing moral, ethical, and specific legal decline reasons
• enabling our flagging system to be more efficiently reviewed by focusing on fraud and abuse
• providing sufficient information for employers to correct any errors in order to be reconsidered for approval 
• helping us at Handshake better understand what's important to you

The decline reason chosen will be added as a comment to the company profile, which is viewable to the employer user(s) connected to that company, as well as other staff members at your institution. 

Select from the following decline reasons:

• Employer industry does not align with our institution policy (dropdown menu, choose one):
  
  • Adult entertainment industry
  • Alcohol or Tobacco
  • Cannabis
  • Firearms
  • Gambling
  • Multi-level marketing
  • Third party recruiter or staffing firm
  • Ideological objection to industry (please explain)
    
    • Comment required
• Not compliant with state labour laws
• Employer requires up-front costs
• Other (please explain below)
  
  • Comment required

After choosing a decline reason, select your choices: 

• Please tell us more about your decision (text box for required comments or additional information you'd like to share)
• Share my name with employer (Yes / No)
  • If you select this option, your name will be displayed with the comment. 
• Would you like to invite this employer to submit this job for approval again after changes or discussion? (Yes / No)
  • • If you select this option, employers will be able to submit the job for approval one more time, after describing the actions taken.

To save, click Decline Employer in the lower-right corner of the popup.  

When the employer decides to submit a second request for consideration, the request will appear as Pending, with orange text "Second request" added below the Date Requested. 

Use the filter "Show only second requests" to narrow down displayed results. 

Employer request outcome notifications

Employer users are automatically sent a notification of the outcome in Handshake and via email. For examples from the employer perspective, refer to Declined by an Institution. 

If an employer chooses to followup via comment, you'll receive a notification of the comment in Handshake and via email. 

• notification in Handshake (accessible via the world icon in the upper-right corner)
• notification via email:
  • Sent from: "handshake@notifications.joinhandshake.com"
  • Subject: "New comment from COMPANY NAME"

If you aren't receiving notifications as expected, double-check your notification preferences for Employers > "Someone comments on an employer approval".

On the company profile in Handshake, you can review the comment and choose to respond. If you respond to the comment, note that your name will be included with your comment.