With the shift towards virtual engagement, creating virtual career fair functionality and robust support has become a top priority. Many of our university partners not only need to know details around how they can host a virtual career fair on Handshake, but what support looks like for preparation, day-of, and after these fairs as well.
Proactive Support for Hosting Virtual Fairs
As with all other Handshake support arrangements, we’re here to provide both proactive training and support resources for escalated situations as you host your virtual career fair.
We've put together a Virtual Engagement Kit with a variety of resources and Help Centre content showing how university partners, employers, and students can prepare for and utilise Handshake virtually. We've hosted multiple related webinars for Career Services partners, employers, and students.
Watch the recordings here:
- Career Services:
- Employers:
- Students:
We also run UK based Office Hours - see the details here.
Day-of Support for Hosting Virtual Fairs
Support for HE Partners:
As part of proactive fair planning, we ask that our university partners create, configure, and manage their own virtual fairs, as well as provide day-of support to their employers and students (more advice on how to do that is in this blog post).
If your team is unable to answer questions or resolve issues, they can check our status page and escalate their questions to Handshake Support.
We’re available to help with:
- Handshake product questions or issues
- Handshake-hosted virtual fair questions or issues
- Handshake best practices and product feedback
Behind the scenes, we’ll also be working to make sure your fair goes smoothly and safely:
- We’ve put together resources to help you prepare and test your fair to ensure it’s successful for all.
- Handshake Video Test and employers will have access to test their video/audio directly from the fair page.
- Virtual Fairs: Supporting Employers for common questions and Hosts: Audio & Video Issues for ensuring employer video & audio are working as expected.
- We developed a way to report virtual fair technical or trust and safety issues to us directly from the product.
- We have a direct channel with our video provider, as well as processes in place to work with them as needed.
- We work with your Relationship Manager to provide proactive consultation, and adjust our coverage to respond to anticipated volume accordingly.
Note: there will be some issues that our team will be unable to help with because they fall outside of the scope of the Handshake product. Typically, this results in employers needing to work with their company's IT team.
These are good topics to think through proactively before you hold your fair:
- If your institution (or an employer) uses a non-Handshake provider for video/livestream hosting, they should contact that provider for support.
- If your (or an employer or student’s) internet connection is slow or disconnected, please contact your internet service provider.
- If your (or an employer or student’s) computer, laptop, or smartphone is slow or not working, please contact your device support provider.
- If your (or an employer or student’s) camera and microphone isn’t working, contact your device support provider.
- If your (or an employer or student’s) web browser isn’t working, first make sure you’re only using Handshake supported browsers - virtual fair video screensharing will only be supported on Chrome and Firefox.
Note: Please visit the Help Centre for articles on virtual fair sessions, FAQs, our support offering and pricing for more details.
Support for Employers and Students:
As always, core employers and students will continue to receive email support and have access to our Help Centre and other resources. We also have resources and best practices for providing day-of support to students and employers - and you can always contact us on their behalf!
Our Track Record of Success
We feel confident about our support model for your virtual fairs because of our track record of support to date.
- We’ve supported 10,000 career fair sessions across 706 institutions, 408,000 employer registrations for 76k unique employers, and 2 million unique student attendees.
- We’ve seen up to 400 career fairs occurring on a given week and up to 30 concurrent career fairs happening on a single day.
- Last autumn, our satisfaction rating was 92%.
Over the years we continue to learn, iterate, and innovate on how we can provide a world-class customer experience and we’re excited to support our partners in this next chapter!
FAQs
What provider are you using for video and chat?
- We are partnering with Twilio to power Handshake video.
- Video and chat will be available on desktop web, iOS, and Android mobile apps for students. Mobile web could also be used, but for the best experience we strongly recommend desktop web (Chrome or Firefox) or native mobile apps.
Do you provide live phone or chat support?
- Please refer to your current support package in your Handshake agreement, as this same service extends to virtual fairs. If you’re unsure about your support plan, you can contact your Relationship Manager and they’ll be happy to talk through with you further.
- Additionally, all institutions and employers will have a Virtual Fair/Event option on our support contact form. Video hosts and participants will also have the ability to report technical and trust and safety issues to us directly.
Are you providing support to employers and/or students?
- All institutions and employers will have a Virtual Fair/Event option on our support contact form. Video hosts and participants will also have the ability to report technical and trust and safety issues to us directly.
- Additionally, we’ve put together a virtual engagement kit, training course and various help articles to provide day-of support to your employers and students.
What is in the virtual engagement kit?
- Our virtual engagement kit is a helpful resource for career centres to effectively navigate all virtual options in Handshake. We also have dedicated sections to better help career centres assist employers and students in virtual settings.
- Materials to engage students: blog posts for students on what a virtual fair is and how to prepare and be successful, tips on how to get hired remotely, as well as help articles on fair day logistics and support resources, video interaction and troubleshooting, and how to set your schedule.
- Materials to enable employers: blog posts on Handshake’s virtual autumn-semester offering, playbooks for employers, an email template to invite employers, training webinar recordings for employers, as well as help articles and checklists for fair preparation, fair day, and other resources.
- Materials to assist with your fair: help articles about video testing for students and employers and email templates, the Autumn 2021 Virtual Fair Benchmark Report, and a virtual fair day checklist.
- Also included: materials related to virtual appointments and virtual info chats.
What happens if your provider or Handshake goes down during our fair?
- In the unlikely event that our video/chat provider has an incident or outage our status page will be updated and we’ll work closely and quickly with our vendor to resolve the issue as fast as possible.
- In the unlikely event that Handshake has an incident or outage our status page will be updated and we’ll work to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
- In either scenario we’ll also place an internal product announcement on their career fairs page to alert our university partners