Receiving Employer Messages in Handshake

Employers approved by your institution may send you messages on Handshake. This includes, but isn’t limited to, event invitations, promotional campaigns, and recruiting messages. 

To send you messages, employers must: 

1. Be approved at your institution - employers that haven’t been approved won’t have access to any students at your institution on Handshake.
2. Have a Trust Score of 80 or higher, OR you must have interacted with the employer previously - prior interactions include applying for a job the employer posted and registering for an event with the employer.
• Note: In rare cases, we'll enable messaging with <80 trust score, usually as a part of the Premium sales process.
• Note: Some institutions block student messaging. 

Employers that have a Trust Score of 80 or higher and are approved by your institution, can send proactive messages to you if your profile privacy is set to Employers or Community. Learn more about Profile Privacy on Handshake. 

Premium Employer Partners

Employers that have paid for Handshake usage are considered Premium partners and have been additionally vetted by Handshake. These employers have access to additional tools that help them connect with students in a more meaningful way. 

Premium Partners can create Segments: subsets of students/alumni who might be a good fit for the employer’s open roles. These students might match certain criteria, have interests aligned with a role, or add representation and diversity to a team.

Note: when Premium Partners use these Segment filters, they can’t view any student names or specific profiles that meet these criteria; however, they may be able to infer student associations based on a particular segment filter. 

Segment filters may include fields from student profiles including education information, work experience, organisations, extracurriculars, gender, and achievements or accolades. They may also include interests you selected such as Industry, Job Type, Job Role, or location. 

For more information, check out our blog post Student Gender Identity and Pronouns on Handshake.

Premium partners that segment by student organisations have the option to select Underrepresented Groups Organisations as a further filter. This filter must be selected in conjunction with another filter and can never be selected on its own. 

Additional Resources 

• Learn more about How to Use Messages in Handshake.
• Discover how to proactively connect with employers in Messaging Employers in Handshake.