Signal Boosting via Employer Collections

Handshake's EDU partners can feature and highlight employer attributes and strengths that students find valuable through Employer Collections. This is referred to as "signal boosting".

Career Services users have discretion over which employers to boost to their students – each EDU partner will have a unique set of guidelines, dependent on how they wish to showcase employers to their students. 

Once you've decided to boost an employer, add them to specific Employer Collections that highlight to your students why the employer is unique. Employers can also be removed from collections at any time.

After boosting employers, filter on employers added to collections in other areas of Handshake and share direct links to collections with students.

For the student's experience please refer to Curated Employers At Your School.

Topics: 

• Determining which employers to boost
• How to boost employers
• Filtering on employers in collections
• Sharing collections with students
• Considerations for employers
• Reporting

Determining which employers to boost

While Handshake will not be explicitly setting guidelines around which employers you can add to Employer Collections, we want to share some information and tips to help you decide which employers to boost. 

• Up to 100 employers can be added to each collection. If you reach 100 employers and want to add a new employer, you'll need to remove an existing employer first.
  • As we learn from the initial launch, we’ll assess whether to change this limit!
• We recommend highlighting smaller, lesser-known employers that wouldn’t otherwise be on students’ radar.
  • Advisory board members reported that they regularly hear from employers that need help driving more applications and would love to boost them if appropriate.
  • Based on our conversations with Signal Boosting Advisory Board members, partners may choose to boost employers for a full semester, or for shorter periods (e.g. in the two weeks ahead of a career fair). 
  • We’re providing a new “Employer Summary Side Sheet” that gives our partners insight into the amount of engagement they’re seeing for each employer—student follows, messages sent, jobs posted, etc—so they can get a better picture of who is eager to connect with their students.

How to boost employers

Career Services users with the “Manage Employers” permission will be able manage which employers are included in your institution's Employer Collections.

You'll only be able to add or remove employers from collections on the Approved Employers page. To access this page, click Employers from the left navigation bar in Handshake, then click the Approved tab.

Decide which employers you'd like to boost for students. You can boost employers individually or in bulk, as outlined below.

Boost employers individually

1. From the list of approved employers, click on one of the options below:

• the name of the employer directly, which will open the employer's Summary Side Sheet, then click the blue button Edit Employer Collections in the upper-right corner
• the three dots menu in the row, to the far right of the employer name, then click Edit Employer Collections from the drop-down menu

2. In the Summary Side Sheet, check the box next to the relevant collection(s):

• Close to campus - Employers near our school.
• Hidden gems - Lesser-known employers with great jobs.
• Popular with alumni - Employers where <School> alumni are working or hiring.
• Hires from our school - Employers who consistently hire <School> students.
• Invests in diversity - Employers with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
• Hires international students - Employers who source international talent.
• Great for internships - Employers with stand-out internship programs.
• Creates social impact - Employers who champion positive social impact, like non-profits and environmental organizations.
• Great for <college> - Employers who are a great fit for specific colleges.
• Great for <major group> - Employers who are a great fit for students studying a specific major.

3. Click the blue button Save to save your changes. 

Boost employers in bulk

1. From the list of employers, put a check in the box to the left of each employer's name you'd like to add to a specific collection.

2. Click More from the column header bar, in the upper-right of the table, then click Add Employers to Collections.

3. In the popup that appears, check the box next to the relevant collection(s):

• Close to campus - Employers near our school.
• Hidden gems - Lesser-known employers with great jobs.
• Popular with alumni - Employers where <School> alumni are working or hiring.
• Hires from our school - Employers who consistently hire <School> students.
• Invests in diversity - Employers with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
• Hires international students - Employers who source international talent.
• Great for internships - Employers with stand-out internship programs.
• Creates social impact - Employers who champion positive social impact, like non-profits and environmental organizations.
• Great for <college> - Employers who are a great fit for specific colleges.
• Great for <major group> - Employers who are a great fit for students studying a specific major.
  • Up to 100 employers can be added per major group!

4. Click the blue button Add to save your changes.

Filtering on employers in collections

After boosting employers, you can filter on employers added to collections in other areas of Handshake, including: 

• Jobs from employers in collections within the Jobs page 

• Contacts from employers in collections within the Contacts page

• Employer alumni from employers in collections within the Alumni Hub

• Events from employers in collections within the Events experience

Sharing collections with students

Students will have access to all boosted employers in all collections via the Career Center page, and if you'd like to share a specific Employer Collection with a subset of students, you can do so via Targeted Emails. 

When creating your Targeted Email, select Employer Collection from the Handshake Content section, under Job. 

In the popup that appears, click the dropdown and select the relevant Employer Collection, then click Save.

Menu option for Handshake Content - Employer Collection: 

Highlighting Jobs and Events from specific collections

When creating a Targeted Email, you can also use Employer Collections to filter jobs and events via Handshake Content. In the popup that appears, select the Employer Collection to filter by, then all related jobs and events from employers in that collection will be listed in the dropdown menu below (Job or Event, depending on what you've chosen). 

Click the blue button Save to insert the chosen content.

Menu option for Handshake Content - Jobs: 

Menu option for Handshake Content - Events: 

Considerations when boosting employers

Employers won't be able to: 

• view in Handshake which EDU partners have boosted them.
  • EDU partners may decide to share this information with Employers if they so wish.
• view Employer Collections or anything to indicate they are part of an Employer Collection.
  • Employers may be exposed to collections through student accounts (informally), while exploring related EDU Help Center content, or if Career Services shares the information with employers directly.

If employers are curious about the process, they should reach out to EDU partners to learn about their process for deciding who to boost.

Reporting

If you would like to report on Employer Collections, we've added additional fields to Analytics within the Employers Explore to do so! 

• Employer Collections
  • Dimensions: Collection, College ID, Created Date, Employer ID, ID, Updated Date
  • Measures: Collection List, Count
• Employer Collections Colleges
  • Dimensions: Created At Date, ID, Name, Updated At Date
  • Measures: Count

For more information on reporting in Handshake, refer to Analytics: The Art of Reporting or check out our Reporting Analytics Training within Handshake Academy!