Managing and Merging Duplicate Student Accounts

This article will provide you with best practices for managing duplicate student accounts. In some cases, a student may create an account independently and have a separate account that is already connected to your school.

Students that are not connected to your school can still apply for jobs on the open network. You can learn more about the student connected and unconnected experience in EDU: Understanding the Job Seeker Experience - Connected vs. Not Connected.

We have proactive and reactive suggestions for managing duplicate student accounts. It is recommended to try the proactive workflows before trying the reactive workflows, but as always, do what's best and most relevant for your school! And if you have any additional questions on how to approach this, reach out to your Relationship Manager.

Topics:

• Proactive: Lowering the amount of new Duplicate Accounts
  • Update alumni emails through the Importer
• Reactive: Merge
• Additional Resources
• FAQ's

Proactive: Lowering the amount of new Duplicate Accounts 

We've added a banner to the student side of Handshake that encourages students to add their personal email address to their accounts. When students graduate, they may end up creating a duplicate account with their personal email address so they can still access Handshake as an alumni. This banner helps reduce the amount of duplicate accounts that will appear.

Update alumni emails through the Importer

The additional_email_addresses field provides the opportunity to add other .edu email addresses, alumni specific email addresses, aliases, etc. for individual students. When successfully updated, the student's account will include the additional email addresses which should help prevent the creation of a duplicate account with that email address!

Additionally, if you have the student’s personal email address, you can update their institution email address to a personal or alumni email address as detailed in Importer: Updating Graduating Students to Alumni.

Reactive: Merge

If deletion is not possible, contact Support to request an account merge. A merge will bring over some of the data from one account into an existing institution created account.

It's important to note that this is not a complete merge and not all data will be carried over. This merge exists specifically for removing unconnected student accounts that have job application data attached to them, and transferring that data into an established account that is connected to your school. Specifically the data transferring over will be the email address and applications, if applicable, any documents, a profile photo and their profile custom link will be carried over as well.

The following are the criteria that need to be met for the account that is not connected to your school, that you wish to remove from Handshake:

• The duplicate account's status is either pending or rejected by your school for connection
• The duplicate account has accepted Handshake's Terms of Service agreement
• The duplicate account has confirmed their email address or authorized Single Sign On
• The duplicate account is not blocked or disabled

The following are the criteria that need to be met for the account that is already connected to your school that the duplicate accounts will be merged into:

• The connected account has accepted Handshake's Terms of Service agreement
• The connected account is not blocked or disabled
• This connected account has Handshake data in one of the following modules:
  • Fair/Event attendee data
  • Appointment data
  • Experience data
  • Job application data
  • FDS/Survey data

Following a successful merge, the duplicate account will be removed and the job application data and email address (as well as any documents, profile photo, and/or profile custom link, if they exist) associated with the duplicate account will be transferred over to the connected account.

Additional Resources

• If the account was created with a personal (not .edu) email, and they haven't applied to any jobs with that account yet, the student can contact Support to request account deletion, then use one of the following options on the existing account:
  • Have the student add the email address as an additional email on their account as described in Update Your Primary Email Address in Handshake.
    • Learn more about this workflow's impact to your team in Additional Email Addresses for Students.
• If the student cannot access their .edu email to change the email themselves, you can change it for them per Career Services User Settings: Email Change Request Process - this will prompt a confirmation to the new email which the student will need to confirm within 24 hours.
• Alternative: if the student account with the .edu email address doesn't have any data associated with it, you can delete the account by following the steps in How to Delete a Student Account, then approve the pending request with the personal email and update the username and auth identifier fields as needed by accessing the account tab in their student record:
  
  

FAQ's

"This email address is already connected to an existing user in Handshake." shows when I try to change the email, but I am unable to locate an account with that email address. What do I do?

• If this is the case, there's already an existing account in Handshake with the email address that is not connected to the school. You will need to determine whether the student is connected to another institution or not. If you're unsure, contact Support for verification.
  • If the student is not connected to another institution, you can add them manually by following the steps in How to Process Student & Alumni Connection Requests.
    • Note: you can use this workflow to determine whether a student is connected to another institution. If you are unable to add them this way, they are likely connected elsewhere. 
  • If the student is connected to another institution, refer to Managing Students Already in Handshake but not Connected to Your School.

Can I delete a student that is pending at my institution?

• Yes, you can delete an account that is pending at your institution if there is no data associated with it (ex. an application). This is only suggested if you know that the student already has an existing active account connected to your institution. We suggest you email the student to let them know what account they should be using. Refer to How to Delete a Student Account for more information.

Note: If the student has any historical data connected to the account, such as: Appointments, Applications, Experiences, or First Destination Surveys, the system won't allow you to delete the student. A pop-up will appear in the middle of the screen confirming the data the student is connected with in Handshake. Contact Support for more information.

When is the student's email changed?

• When they confirm the change by entering the verification code that was sent to their updated email address.

Can I update an email address to one that already exists in Handshake?

• No, if the email address already exists in Handshake (even if it is tied to a different user type) you can't use that email address. This is to make sure that students don't get access to a career services user or employer account.
• Note: If you are testing this process as a career services user, and you attempt to change the email to your student account, you will not be able to change it back to match your career services account email.