Employers who do not have a corporate email domain can register on Handshake with their company's designated generic email address.
A generic email is an email address that uses a domain like yahoo.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, or icloud.com.
To set up your Handshake account with a generic email address, be prepared to provide any additional information that may be requested.
To sign up for an account, enter your organization's generic email address, similar to how you would enter a corporate email address.
Check out how to Create an Employer User Account, Join a Company, and Connect with Schools.
Registering with a generic email address
When you enter a generic email address, a message will appear stating: "It looks like you're using a generic personal email address (@gmail, @yahoo, @hotmail, etc).
To best connect you with your company and students, please use your work email address instead. You will be unable to join an existing company when registering with a generic domain.
Continue the registration process. Set and confirm your password, then click the button Sign Up.
After confirming your email address, you can either connect to an existing company profile or create a new one if necessary. We recommend searching for your organization’s name first to check if a company profile already exists.
- If you attempt to join your organization’s company profile and encounter the error message "You cannot join a company if you have a generic email domain. Please re-register with your company's email. If you need to use your current email, you can contact support and have them manually add you," this indicates your email domain is not accepted. To resolve this, submit a ticket to our Support team.
- For guidance on submitting a ticket, refer to Contacting Handshake Support.
- If you are unable to locate an existing company profile, you can create a new one. Learn more about How to Create a New Company Profile.
Note: If you plan to post job listings for household positions, such as babysitting or caretaking roles, review the guidelines in Posting Personal, Babysitter, Household, or Caretaker Jobs.