Engaging with your Employer partners is vital to building long-term campus recruiting connections. Upon making the switch to Handshake, most schools typically see a 2-3X increase in employer engagement due to the ease of use.
With this increase in volume, it's important to identify strategy up front to help you build those long-term employer connections!
Pre-invite Checklist:
If you're in implementation, run through this checklist to ensure you're ready to send the invite:
- Import your employer contact file
- Send your employers a “heads up” email (optional)
- Determine if you'll targeting a select group of Employers (on campus, "white glove" partners, etc) and how you will identify them
- Email your Handshake Partnership Manager to "unhide" your school
- Determine which team member is “sending” the invite in Handshake
Once you're live, you should start to see quite a few employers trickling in. This is a great time to nail down a vetting and approval process that works for your office.
Employer Approval Best Practices:
Once you're live and working through a queue of employer approvals, use these tips to build and efficient workflow, tailored to your team's needs.
Best Practice: Set aside time to approve incoming companies + postings
Why: This empowers your office to vet relevant postings, it ensures high quality, engaging network for students, and puts you in a position to strengthens and build employer relationships
Strategy:
- Configure default approval settings
- Add labels to track white glove or high-touch employer partners
- Setup saved searches for job postings or employer approvals
- Turn on the role to "Auto-Approve Jobs" for your trusted Employers
- Leverage the Handshake Community for insights and tips
Best Practice: Vet employer (company) requests thoroughly
Why: Employers cannot post a job to a school unless their company has been approved to post jobs there. However, once your school approves a company, all staff who are connected to the account can request to post a position.
The time that you invest in vetting the company now, allows you to quickly scan and approve postings down the road.
The up-front approval process helps you curate an engaging network that aligns with your university's brand.
Strategy:
Use ALL of these factors to determine if the company is a good fit:
- Staff Member email addresses (align with company contact?)
- Company contact information + social pages
- Ensure that the “about” details align
- Trust score and # of approves/declines across the network
Best Practice: Scan + approve jobs
Why: We recommend approving jobs from a variety of employers and industries (even if they don't typically align with your traditional relationships) as this give students the ability to explore meaningful careers beyond their major.
However, your office does have the final say on job approvals, and can curate the network based on your institutional guidelines. This also give you a chance to vet postings for fraudulent or suspicious employers.
Strategy:
- Setup saved searches to build a vareity job posting queues
- Add comments (and develop canned responses) when you decline a job posting to notify the employer as to why
- Check for suspicious or fraudulent concerns
- Leverage Handshake Community for insights and tips across the network
Additional Resources: Supporting Your Employers
Still curious? You're not the only one! This is a hot topic across the Handshake network, and we encourage you to leverage the insights and tips from over 500+ university partners across the country.
Handshake Community: Join the conversation
- Managing Employer Approval Requests
- Employer Vetting Criteria
- Decline Reasoning and Language
- Discussion: Posting Jobs on Behalf of Employers
- Working with Third Party Recruiters
Handshake Help Center: Explore our FAQs
Handshake User Conference Presentations: Review the best practices
- Hillsdale College's Employer Approval Strategy
- Employer Launch Overview and Best Practices
Handshake Webinars: