Managing Multi-School Fairs in Handshake

You can share a fair with other schools on Handshake by following the steps in this resource.

Before sharing a fair in Handshake, it's important to clearly identify your sharing goals with the other school, and understand the sharing settings within Handshake fairs. Without both of those addressed, it's possible to end up with an unintended result, such as students being unable to view or register for the fair. 

Topics: 

• Share a fair with another school or Handshake Open Network
  • Share your fair with the Handshake Open Network
  • Invite a specific school to participate in your fair
  • Share an Invite-only fair with other schools 
• Fair situation, setting selection, and student outcome matrix 
  • To help clarify expectations, we've mapped goals, sharing settings, and student outcomes in a chart at the end of this article. 
• Post Career Fair Reporting 
• Post Employer and Student Surveys

Share a fair with another school or Handshake Open Network

For additional guidance, check out our blog post 5 Tips for Hosting a Multi-School Virtual Fair on Handshake!

Share your fair with the Handshake Open Network

If you'd like your fair to be discoverable to the Handshake Open Network (verified students that go to a school that hasn't partnered with us yet, please make sure to check Show this fair to all Handshake students (including students at other schools), located on the "Edit" tab of your fair. 

To discover the fair while browsing (without the fair link), the filter "Only posted by my school" must be toggled off on the student event search page.

Note: you won't be able to share an event or fair with only the Handshake Open Network, or a specific school within the network, so if you mark this setting, it'll be discoverable by all students. 

Note: profile information isn't imported for students in the Handshake Open Network, so some students may be missing data, e.g. school year, college, GPA, major, etc. As such, please be aware of any qualifications you set for your fair, as these could restrict students from registering. 

Invite a specific school to participate in your fair

If you'd like students at another Handshake-partnered school to be able to participate in your fair, you can invite that school using this process. Co-hosts will be able to use Handshake tools to view registered employers, invite and email their students, and download their attendee info. 

• Tip: share this resource with invited schools Co-hosting a Multi-school Fair in Handshake.

1. From the fair's overview page, click the blue button Add Schools, located under the "Partnering with other schools?" header.

2. This will take you to the Invited Schools tab within the Edit section of the Career Fair. Click on Add School in the upper-right corner of that page. 

3. Select the desired school you'd like to invite to the career fair from the dropdown, then check the box to confirm that you have connected with the school and have their approval to proceed.

Click Invite to post the fair to the school.

• Note: only schools that have partnered with Handshake will be listed in this dropdown. You can type in the text box to search the school list, but if you are unable to locate the school, then it's possible the school has not yet partnered with us. We'd recommend following the steps for sharing a fair with the Handshake Open Network to include more students! 

4. After inviting the desired school(s), we recommend the host school send out comms reminding the invited schools to:

• review/approve all employers based on the registrations list.
• monitor for new employer registrations before the fair, if the employer registration window is still open. 

Employers that have registered for the fair need to be approved at each school for employer users to message/connect with the schools students.

Share an Invite-only fair with other schools 

If you'd like to share an invite-only fair (virtual or in-person) with other schools, you'll need to make sure the fair is marked as "Invite-only" within the Edit tab of the fair, then follow the steps below depending on the other school(s)'s Handshake partnership status. 

Handshake-partnered school

Make sure you have invited the school via the Invite School process described above.

Co-hosts from the invited school can use the "Invite Students" button from the fair overview page to invite their students. Alternatively, they can share a unique Student Preview Link with their students (steps described below). Since the fair is marked as "Invite-only", students will be unable to view the fair unless they have been invited or have the fair preview link. 

Co-hosts can also use the "Email Student Attendees" button to communicate with their students about the fair. For steps, refer to Email Event or Fair Attendees. 

Open school

If the other school has not yet partnered with Handshake, you'll need to complete the following steps:

1. Make sure that the following fair setting is checked (selected) in the Edit tab of the fair: "Show this fair to all Handshake students (including students at other schools)". Even though this setting is marked, the fair is not discoverable to any student on Handshake without the student preview link!

• • Note: please consider any qualifications you set for the fair, as these could restrict students from registering –– profile information isn't imported for students in the Handshake Open Network, so some students may be missing data, e.g. school year, college, GPA, major, etc. 

2. Copy the Student Preview Link, located on the left of the fair overview page. In order for Open students to view and register for the fair, they must have the fair's student preview link.

• Troubleshooting tip: if the generic fair link (not student preview link) is shared instead, students will receive an error: "You do not have permission to do that. Please contact the Handshake team or your local administrator."
  • Follow this step to share the Student Preview Link with them, and that should resolve the issue!

Best Practice 1 of 2: After you copy the link, before sharing it out, paste the link to confirm the correct link has been copied. The link should be similar to this one copied from our demo environment: https://joinhandshake-demo.com/career_fairs/3764/student_preview?token=8Gr_KyWT4Fr-8CZrmmzySs2uCBndGRjDCg_QhXrtxU8W5d6f18ifng 

In your link, your school's Handshake link will be included, along with the fair ID, followed by "student_preview" and the invite token, as shown below:

Best Practice 2 of 2: If you’re sharing the fair link with a non-partner school, update the fair link so that it begins with “app.joinhandshake.com” instead of your school specific link. This leads to Handshake’s generic login page where non-partner students can sign up for an account and register for the fair.

3. Start inviting students! Because the school has not yet partnered with Handshake, the preview link in Step 2 is required in order for students to view and register for the fair. You can reach out to the other school(s) directly to have them advertise the link through other methods, such as website, social media, etc.

Fair situation, setting selection, and student outcome matrix 

The right fair setting selections depend on the sharing goals you as the host school have. Different setting combinations will produce different outcomes for students, so we developed the matrix below to clarify how each of the two relevant fair settings impact potential situations (or goals) you may have. 

In both the matrix image and accessible text version below the image: 

• The left column lists possible fair situation/goals.
• The middle two columns indicate fair sharing settings selected Yes/No per situation & outcome.
  • Both settings are located in the Edit tab of your school's fair: Show this fair to all Handshake students (including students at other schools) and Career fair is invite-only.
• The far-right column describes the student outcome and includes tips or notes as applicable.

Tip: if you'd like to make the matrix image below larger for easier viewing, right click on the image, then choose open image in a new tab!

The same table as displayed in the image – text version.

Post Career Fair Reporting 

Invited schools cannot report on attendees or registrants. We recommend the host school download the Student Attendee CSV from the "Registered Students" page to share with all participating schools.

This spreadsheet will be the best representation of overall student engagement for the fair and will include:  

• All the students who registered for the fair.
  
• Of the students who registered, how many "checked-in". We count a student as "checked-in" if they attended at least one session. If it shows a "no" under the check-in column, this means the student didn't attend any sessions/fair.
  
• Of the students who registered, how many 1:1 and Group sessions did they sign up for.
  
• Of the students who registered for the fair and signed up for sessions (both 1:1 and Group), how many did they attend? You can identify this by comparing the number of signups a student had vs their number of "no shows".
  

Post Employer and Student Surveys