An Overview of Student and Alumni Accounts in Handshake

To use Handshake as a current student or alum, you'll need a Student account type. The Student account type provides the same basic access for current students and alumni, although individual institutions may only provide certain services to current students. 

The features available to a Student account type depend on:

• your account's connection with a institution instance (described below)
• your institution's partnership status with Handshake
  • An institution is considered a Handshake partner if the Career Services Centre has chosen to manage your institution's instance and use Handshake for additional features, such as managing Appointments, internships (via Experiences), First Destination Surveys, and more. 
  • Institutions that haven't yet partnered with us may still have an institution instance as part of the Handshake Open Network. Read more about our goals for Expanding Our Efforts to Help All Students Find Opportunity.

Once your account is connected with an institution, your homepage will include various resources: 

• Jobs: explore active job and internship postings 
• Events: discover events and fairs hosted both by approved employers or your institution
• Employers: discover employers approved to connect with your institution
• Recommendations for engagement: prompts to attend an event, follow employers, schedule 1-on-1 time with employers, and more

If you haven't used Handshake yet, check out Getting Started in Handshake!

Not connected to an institution in Handshake

If your account is not connected to an institution instance yet, you can manage your profile and access public career fairs on Handshake. This is typical if you created a new account and your institution request is pending.

For more information on how to get connected with an institution, check out If You Can Only Access Profile and Fairs.

If you attend a Handshake-partner institution

Once you're connected to a Handshake-partner institution, your institution's Career Centre is linked on the homepage and also next to your account icon in the upper-right corner. Use these links to connect with your Career Services staff via Appointments, complete a First Destination Survey, take a survey, or check out additional resources.

Here's an example of the homepage for a student connected to a Handshake-partner institution:

If you attend an institution that hasn't yet partnered with Handshake

If you are connected to an institution that hasn't yet partnered with Handshake, you can:

• manage your profile
• access fairs and events hosted by Handshake-partner institutions and shared publicly
• apply to jobs posted by a subset of trusted employers

The key way to identify if your institution is a Handshake partner or not is if the Career Centre link is not displayed on the homepage or next to your account icon - instead, Messages is immediately to the left of your account icon.

If you're enjoying your experience on Handshake, feel free to encourage your career centre to formally partner with us and we can unlock additional benefits for you and your institution!

Here's an example of the homepage for a student connected to an institution that is not yet partnered with Handshake: