Product Announcement—August 6, 2021

Recently Released

For Career Services…

Virtual Appointments

Virtual appointments on Handshake are now available! Built with seamless, integrated video (that you’ll recognize from virtual fairs), virtual appointments help you provide a flexible, comfortable experience for students no matter where they are. This feature is free for all partners to use.

• Learn how to configure virtual appointments here

Multi-School Virtual Fairs

We’ve launched updates to make it easier for our partners to collaborate on multi-school fairs. Institutions invited to join the fair can function as true co-hosts with access to their students’ registration and attendance data, and the ability to email students about the fair through Handshake.

• Learn about multi-school fair updates here

Survey Downloads

Survey downloads now include the Question ID as a prefix in the column headers. This addition makes it easier to differentiate between questions when reviewing your download.

For Students…

Mobile App Update

We’re rolling out a new homepage on our iOS app—it’ll be live to all users next week and coming on Android soon. The new interface emphasizes more opportunities for students to build relationships with employers.

Self-Reported Race/Ethnicity

Similar to self-reporting gender, which launched last year, students can now self-report their race/ethnicity in Handshake. They’ll see the option to enter the information during new user onboarding, and on their profile (Note: values in the UK will reflect UK standards). The feature is currently available on our iOS app—desktop and Android support coming soon.

• Students' self-reported race/ethnicity data will be stored separately from race/ethnicity imported by your institution.
• In the coming months, premium employers will be able to use the data (anonymized and aggregated) to help them craft campaigns.

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...

Archiving Appointment Mediums

In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to archive old appointment mediums that your team no longer uses. This is especially useful if you’re using virtual appointments on Handshake and need to retire old appointment mediums you used to promote Zoom/Google Hangout links.

Virtual Fair Support Rooms

In the coming weeks, you’ll have the option to promote links to external support rooms for students and employers through Handshake. After entering your external video links for student and/or employer support rooms, they’ll be promoted to each audience within the virtual fair experience.

Flags & Decline Reasons

We’re implementing updates to our flag taxonomy to keep them focused on identifying fraud and abuse, plus adding new notifications for career services if an employer they previously approved is flagged. We’re also expanding decline reasons to encompass both employers and jobs and will soon surface them to employers to provide more transparency around the approvals process.

• Read more about these updates here

For Students…

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.

Re-onboarding

In order to serve students the most relevant recommendations, it’s important they keep key aspects of their profile up to date. In the coming weeks, we’ll send students returning to Handshake through the process of re-onboarding—similar to the experience they went through when they logged onto Handshake for the first time.

• Re-onboarding is optional, so students can opt out if they don’t want to update their information. Students who completed the original onboarding process within the last 6 months will not be prompted to go through re-onboarding.

Virtual Info Chats

This summer, we’re launching virtual info chats—informal, 15-minute 1:1 conversations between a student and employer, hosted on Handshake. Virtual info chats were created to help students connect with employers in a less intimidating setting to get an inside look at company culture and available opportunities. They also allow employers to take a more personalized approach to recruiting and make a lasting impression on potential applicants.

• All employers (free and premium) will be able to offer students availability for virtual info chats via messages they send to students and, later, within job postings too.

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.