Job Applicant Management Guide

Your job posting has been approved at a school, and has started receiving applications. Great! Now what? This article provides an overview of resources to help manage your job applicants in Handshake.

To access a posting's applicants, click Jobs from the left navigation bar, select the relevant job posting, then click the Applicants tab. 

For more information about using Jobs or the other tabs within a job overview, refer to Navigating the Jobs Page.

All applicants will be displayed on the page, along with columns for their school name, application status, the number of candidate preferences they meet, and the date of their application. 

Check out Reviewing Applications in Handshake for a breakdown of information on individual applications.

Applicant filters

From here, use the filters on the left of the page to identify applicants based on: 

• Keyword Search
• Engagement
  • This filter returns any applicants who received a message with this job attached.
• Status (Application Status)
• Labels
• Not Labels
• Schools
• Skills
• Majors
• Individual Majors
• Date (application created date)

Use the filters (checkboxes) at the top of the applicants table to identify candidates that match the candidate preferences set for this job:  

• Graduation Date / School Years
• GPA
• Majors
• Work Authorization

Applicant bulk actions

Select the checkbox(es) next to relevant applicants to access bulk actions: 

• Message Students
  • Learn more about Messaging Applicants.
• Download applicant packages (PDF, Zip, and CSV options)
  • For additional information, refer to Download Applications / Create a Resume Book.
• Add or remove labels
  • Check out Best Practice: Use Labels to Manage Applicants.
• Mark applications hired or declined 
  • Additional resources below.

Status Management

With Handshake, you can send custom automated messages to applicants based on the status of their applications. For additional details, refer to Applicant Status Messaging Preferences. 

As displayed above, you can update applications in bulk, as well as update individual application statuses from the status dropdown in each row. For more information, refer to Managing Applicant Status.

If you'd like to learn more about what each status represents, we recommend Definitions: Application Statuses.

Once you've updated statuses, you can also Hide Declined Applicants. Curious about What happens when I decline applicants?

Additional Resources

• Improving Applicant Response Rate - tips to increase the number of qualified candidates.
• Employer Missing Applications - if you aren't able to access applications as expected.
• Managing Interview Schedule Applicants - how to manage candidates for on-campus interviews.
• Applicant List Upload - for our Premium partners