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
Determine which team member is “sending” the invite in Handshake
When you're ready to send the bulk invite, you'll have the option to "unhide" your school, so employers will be able to connect.

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.

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

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

Confirming employer information

When vetting employers, know that employers who have a residential address or an industry size of 1-10 are likely just getting started, so this is not usually a cause for concern.
- Tip: instead of simply Googling an address, try searching the company name and the address together, and this can help you validate if the address is registered to the company!
Please account for human error! If you see an error that may just be an oversight, such as a website that ends in ".ocm" instead of ".com", chances are, this is not a reason to be suspicious, and probably just a typo.
Communicate directly with the employer about your concern/observation by adding a comment on the company profile, in the Employer Approval box. The employer will receive a notification about your comment and have a chance to make the needed changes or otherwise address your concern directly.

Industry best practices:

In addition to confirming employer information you should also note the email address attached to the staff members at the company requesting approval. Our "extra details" (yellow triangle) will help you answer these questions:

Does the domain match that of the email address?
Is the email domain a generic one (gmail, hotmail, outlook, etc.)?
Is the email domain one that nearly matches the company name, but may have an extra word in it (for example, @mcdonaldsmail.com instead of @mcdonalds.com)?

Another tipoff that a company may not be legitimate is the company details:

Are you able to locate more information on the company via a web search? Are there reviews of the company on peer review sites?
Does the website actually work?
- Sometimes sites can be set up to redirect to another site–if the website loads successfully, does the address in the web address bar match what's in Handshake?

Using this information can help you make an informed choice when approving or declining an employer.

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 your students will access.

Strategy:

Setup saved searches to build a variety of job posting queues
Add comments (and develop canned responses) when you decline a job posting to notify the employer as to why
Check the description, pay, and other details for unrealistic or suspicious information
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

Handshake Help Center: Explore our FAQs

Supporting Your Employers: Troubleshooting + FAQs

Handshake User Conference Presentations: Review the best practices

Handshake Webinars: