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 additional best practices, refer to Best Practices: Employer Approvals and Best Practices: Tips for Vetting Employers on Handshake. 

Tip: If the screenshots below do not look familiar, you may still be on the legacy view. If you'd like to update, click on the green "Update Available" button in the upper-left of the Manage Employers page! 

Please note that these screenshots are taken from our US site and there may be some differences from the UK platform

To approve or decline employers who have requested approval at your institution, follow these steps:
 

1. Determine which employers are requesting approval (employers with a status of pending have requested, but not yet received, approval from your institution).  The simplest way to do this is:

• Click on Employers on the left hand navigation bar to be directed to the Manage Employers page, which defaults to Pending Employers.
  • Note: The number to the right of Employers indicates the number of requests pending.

Please note that these screenshots are taken from our US site and there may be some differences from the UK platform. 

Alternatively, you can:

• Click on Home in the left hand navigation bar to be taken to your home page; the right side of your homepage highlights items needing your attention.
• Scroll down to find Employer Approvals and how many employers are waiting for approval.
• Click on the link next to the number to be directed to a list of employers with pending status. 

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 this icon to see other relevant information, such as an unconfirmed email, a non-matching domain, no job postings yet, etc.
    • • 
    • 
    • Please note that these screenshots are taken from our US site and there may be some differences from the UK platform

• If you’d like to contact the employer directly to discuss their approval request, go to the employer’s profile and locate the Contact Information section on the left side.

Tip: 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: Please note that these screenshots are taken from our US site and there may be some differences from the UK platform. 

3. Now that you've evaluated the pending employer, you're ready to approve/decline the request. Use the Yes/No buttons to Approve/Decline: 
 

When you decline an employer, you'll be prompted to submit a reason (optional) for the decline:

Adding this detail helps your colleagues be aware of concerns, as well as helping us at Handshake better understand what's important to you.

If you do not wish to enter a reason, click Decline. 

To approve or decline more than one employer at a time:

• Check the checkbox to the left of all of the employers you would like to approve. This will cause bulk actions to appear.
• Click More, then click Approve Employers.  After making your selection, a confirmation dialog box will load requesting to confirm your task. Please note that these screenshots are taken from our US site and there may be some differences from the UK platform
• After confirming, refresh your screen to view the remaining list of pending employers.  Those that were approved have been removed from this list.
• Repeat the previous three steps for all employers you’d like to decline (this time checking the checkbox to the left of all employers you’d like to decline, and selecting Decline Employers).

 Tip: You can also use the bulk actions menu to remove a label, or add/remove roles. 

To approve or decline employers from the company profile:

• Click on the employer name from the list.  
• Click the appropriate status and click on Save Approved/Save Declined at the bottom.

Industry best practices:

Aside from the Trust Score and the number of approvals, you should also note the email address attached to the staff members at the company requesting approval. Our new "extra details" (yellow triangle) will help you answer these questions: 

• Is the email domain a generic one (gmail, hotmail, outlook, etc.)? 
• Is the email domain one that nearly matches the company name, but may have an extra word in it (for example, @mcdonaldsmail.com instead of @mcdonalds.com)?

Another tipoff that a company may not be legitimate is the company details:

• Is the location of the company legitimately a business address, or does it pull up a residential home or an empty space in a Google search?
• Does the website actually work? Does the domain match that of the email address?

Using this information can help you make an informed choice when approving or declining an employer.