In an effort to continue to democratize access to information, we are excited about an upcoming update that will allow Questions and Answers and Reviews submitted in Handshake to be visible outside of Handshake. We’re improving the ability for students to find Handshake and your career centre by making Reviews and Questions and Answers visible through search. We’ve learned through our user research that students primarily use Google to search and find career advice and opportunities. This change will hopefully drive more students to log into Handshake and discover the resources you have for them. To protect students’ privacy, their profile pictures, names, and institutions will be hidden on external pages - only a student’s most recent work experience and course will be visible outside of Handshake.
This update will be live by September 19th, 2019 - keep an eye on product announcements for the final date. We are sending an email to all students that have submitted a Question, Answer, or Review letting them know about this update and giving them the opportunity to opt out of making their content visible outside of Handshake. This will likely impact a very small subset of students at each individual institution - check out the following links to see how many!
**Note that for the Q&A reports, you'll need to enter your institution name into the Asker/Answerer School Name filter at the top of the page**
Maintaining transparency and respecting student privacy is a top priority for our team. There are a few reasons we feel confident with our approach. Reviews and Q&A that students chose to make public are currently visible to all users in Handshake (including employers). We're reaching out to every student who submitted a public Review or Q&A to share that the content will additionally be made visible outside of Handshake with their name, picture, and institution removed. It will also include instructions on how they can opt out of sharing their content externally at any time. Further, the terms that students agreed to ahead of submitting Review or Q&A content included consent to share this information outside of Handshake. That said, we wanted to include this outreach as an added layer of transparency for students since we're sharing the content somewhere we previously were not. Students will also be made aware of this change for any new content they submit in the future as well!
Example of a Public Review
Updated Privacy Statements
Q&A
Reviews
Email to students who previously submitted a question or answer
Subject: Update: Handshake Questions and Answers now visible in Google Search
Hello {first name},
You are receiving this email because you submitted a Question or Answer in the last year on Handshake.
We are excited to share that Q&A content will soon be visible anonymously to non-logged in users of Handshake. That means students not on Handshake will be able to learn and benefit from Q&A. As of {{date}}, your question or answer can show up in google searches (and other search engines). To protect your privacy, your profile picture, name and institution will be hidden - only your most recent work experience and course will be visible outside of Handshake.
If you would like to make any questions or answers you have submitted to Handshake in the past visible only to users logged into Handshake, you can reach out to our support team here and we will update the status of your questions and answers for you.
Email to students who previously submitted a Review in Handshake
Subject: Update: Handshake Questions and Answers now visible in Google Search
Hello {first name},
You are receiving this email because you submitted a Review in the last year on Handshake.
We are excited to share that Reviews will soon be visible to non-logged in users of Handshake. That means students not on Handshake will be able to learn and benefit from Reviews. As of {{date}}, your review can show up in google searches (and other search engines). To protect your privacy, your profile picture, name and institution will be hidden - only your most recent work experience and course will be visible outside of Handshake.
If you would like to make any reviews you have submitted to Handshake in the past visible only to users logged into Handshake, you can log into your Handshake account before {{date}} and change the status of your Review to private. Alternatively you can reach out to our support team here and we will update the status of your questions and answers for you.