Product Announcement—July 2, 2021

Recently Released

For Students…

Virtual Fair Follow Up Messages

We now prompt students to send a follow up message after they complete a 1:1 virtual fair session. If they prefer to wait until the end of the fair, students will find messaging threads pre-created in their inbox for every 1:1 they attended.

• These prompts will help students keep the conversation going with recruiters, ultimately leading to more meaningful connections.
• In the coming months, we’ll update our post-fair email for students to remind them who they met with 1:1 and encourage them to send a follow up message.

For Employers…

Job Matches Email Experiment

We’re experimenting with sending an email to employers once they’ve posted a job that drives the employer to visit the matches tab. There, the employer can review students who qualify for the position and send them a message encouraging them to apply.

• We’ll take learnings from the experiment to inform a full launch of this email.

Coming Soon

Interested in learning about virtual fair updates? Check out our virtual fair release notes for more details. We’ll share more information on these updates in the coming weeks!

For Career Services...

New Dashboards

We’re developing three new insights dashboards to help your team take action on data related to equity, virtual engagement, and employer relations.

Virtual Appointments

This summer, we’re launching virtual appointments on Handshake, with seamless, integrated video (that you’ll recognize from virtual fairs), to help institutions reach more students—for free.

• Learn more about virtual appointments on Handshake here

Flags & Moderation

We’re implementing updates to our flag taxonomy to keep them focused on identifying fraud and abuse. We’re also adding new notifications for career services if an employer they previously approved is flagged.

• Read more about these updates here

For Students…

Mobile App Update

This summer, we’re updating our mobile app interface—the fresh, new look will highlight more opportunities for students to build relationships with employers.

• The updated interface will roll out on iOS and Android over the summer. Check out an early mockup of what the new jobs and relationships feed might look like here. Note that the School tab will move to the Account menu.

Parsing Public Resumes/CVs

When students upload a resume or CV, they’re shown the option to automatically populate their Handshake profile with information from the resume/CV. We’re now able to parse even more information from resumes/CVs and want to provide students with more opportunities to take advantage of this enhancement. In the coming months, we’ll offer to build out student profiles in more places that involve a resume/CV upload, like when registering for a virtual fair or applying for a job.

• For students that have an existing resume/CV on their profile that’s public to employers, we’ll automatically parse out key information like work experiences and skills so that employers can use it (aggregated and anonymized) to target their messaging campaigns. This will save students the step of having to add the information to their profiles and make them more likely to receive relevant outreach from employers.

Self-Reported Race/Ethnicity

Similar to self-reporting gender, which launched last year, students will soon be able to self-report their race/ethnicity in Handshake. This data will be stored separately from race/ethnicity imported by your institution and, with the student’s consent, shared with employers (anonymized and aggregated) to help them craft campaigns.

• We performed extensive research with students and career services staff across different institutions and racial/ethnic backgrounds to inform how the option to self-report is presented in Handshake. Stay tuned for mockups.

For Employers…

Job Page Refresh

We’re updating the job page for employers to make it more actionable and easier to navigate. Updated tabs for job details, target institutions, student matches, and applicants will encourage employers to connect with a wider pool of students.