Document Status in Handshake

Your career center may choose to approve the documents you upload, whether or not those documents are visible on your profile.

To see your uploaded documents and status of each, click on your account icon in the upper-right corner of Handshake, then click on Documents from the dropdown menu.

Document statuses

There are four possible statuses your document can have within Handshake: Pending, Approved, Changes Required, and Changes Suggested.

Pending: This indicates that your document is pending review by your career center. You can still apply to jobs with a pending document, but please note that depending on your career center's preferences, your application may not be fully submitted until the document is approved. This means that the employer likely won't see your application until the document is approved. For additional information, you should reach out to your career center.

If your document has been pending for over a week, you can click on the name of the document, and on the following page, click on the button for Reach Out, located in the yellow banner at the top of the page.

Note: on the right of the page, in the Attached Applications section, this indicates your school requires the document to be reviewed prior to applications being submitted with the document.

Note: If the documents aren’t approved before by the career center by the application close deadline, the application is withdrawn, and you will be notified.

Approved: This status indicates your career center requires documents to be approved before they can be attached to an application, and they have approved your document for normal usage.

Reviewed: This indicates your career center has reviewed your document and confirmed it "as is", without changes. 

Changes Required: This indicates that your career center requires changes to be made to the document. Once the changes have been made, you can upload the new version to Handshake. 

Note: Some schools do have a setting enabled that blocks unapproved documents from being submitted with an application. You can click on the document and look under the Attached Applications section - if it says "This resume can not be attached to any job applications until it has been approved by your university. You could reach out for an update.", then this means the document must be marked as Approved in order to fully submit applications using it. 

Changes Suggested: This status shows that there are recommendations suggested by your career center, but typically they are not required in order to use your document in Handshake. 

Note: Some schools do have a setting enabled that prevents unapproved documents from being submitted with an application - if your school uses this workflow, then an application with "Changes Suggested" would not be visible to the recruiter until the job posting has expired. When the job posting expires, your application will be fully submitted.

Activity and Comments

Career Services users can also leave comments on your documents. Click on the document name, then scroll to the bottom of the page to see the comments made.

Ready to apply for a job? Check out Apply for a Job in Handshake for more details!