How Can I Get Approved By Schools?

When signing up for Handshake, you will need to be approved at each school you'd like to recruit from.

Each school partnered with Handshake is independently responsible for approving/declining employer requests to connect, and schools have different deciding factors when selecting which employers to connect with.

We find that the more accurate, up to date, and matching information that an employer provides when they first register and create their company profile, the more success they will have in getting approvals. 

• Register for your Handshake account using a work-related email with a matching domain.
  • Read this article on what to do if you only have a generic email domain.
• Make sure your website is functioning and matches the company you're recruiting for. 
• If you're creating a new company, enter in as much information as possible, which helps establish transparency between your company and schools.
  • Click here to find out how to create a company on Handshake.

After filling out your company profile information, you'll be able to request to connect with schools. We recommend to only request 10-20 schools when initially signing up. If you select too many at once before establishing a presence on Handshake, you may damage your Trust Score.

You can always go back and add more by following the steps in School Network Management, once you're established on Handshake. Learn more here on how to increase your Trust Score.

Once you have requested to connect with schools on Handshake, the request is automatically submitted to the Career Center for review. It typically takes 1-5 business days for a school to approve an employer's request, however, the approval time depends solely on the school's process.

Your request will stay in a Pending status until the school determines to approve or decline. The request may change to an In Progress status, which means the school has reviewed your profile, but is typically waiting for some information from you before they can make a decision to approve or decline your request.

If you have any specific questions in regards to a school's decision, reach out to the Career Services team at that school. 

Note: Only a school's Career Center can change your status with them on Handshake.

To contact the Career Center, search for and click on the name of the school in the search bar at the top of the Handshake page. 

Their contact information will be located on the left side of their profile page.