What Is Handshake?
Handshake is a job marketplace where employers advertise jobs and internships for college students and graduates at Handshake’s partnering colleges and universities. In addition, employers can connect with candidates via Handshake and set up virtual or in-person career fairs.
Featured Partners
1
BambooHR
Yes
Yes
ATS
2
Pinpoint ATS
Yes
Yes
24/7 customer support, easy-to-use interface, fast and flexible workflows, hundreds of integrations
3
ClearCompany
Yes
Yes
Employee engagement
How Handshake Works
Handshake Core is the free version while Handshake Premium is the paid version that is broken down into two products: Plus and Talent Engagement Suite. We tested Handshake Core on the Google Chrome browser of a Windows laptop.
When logging in, the interface is rudimentary but intuitive. The main menu is laid out on the left sidebar, and we were presented with the three main functions of Handshake Core: job posting, interview requests and event planning. We’ll explore all three of these features more in depth below.\
Handshake’s home screen layout is simple but makes it easy to get started.
Handshake Core Features
Handshake’s free version, Handshake Core, allows you to create a career site landing page, post jobs, connect with postsecondary institutions and more.
Career Site
Handshake Core hosts a career site for your company that you can customize with your logo, a banner image, a company description and social media links.
Job Posting
Handshake Core enables you to post job openings not only on your own company website on the platform but also on the sites of all universities that are in your network. As applications come in, you can search, sort and download applications and offer candidates the option to message you within your job posting.
We found it very easy to set up a new job post on Handshake. You enter the job title, job description, location and other information and preferences before posting to all schools in your network or only specific schools.
Setting up a new job in Handshake is easy. Simply enter the information and choose which of your partner schools you want to advertise the post at.
School Network Management
On Handshake’s platform, you can search for specific schools and request to connect with them as partners. In this sense, Handshake is like a social media network between employers and postsecondary institutions and their students.
Once your company connects with a university, you can submit approval requests to post jobs to the school’s career site, host events at their institution, attend their career fairs and to interact with students directly. You can track your permissions and approval statuses under Relationships>Schools>Permissions filter or by navigating to a particular school in your network.
See all schools in your network and their permissions and approval statuses.
Interviewing
According to Handshake’s website, employers can request on-site and virtual interviews at schools in your partner network by setting dates, requesting rooms and specifying the agenda of the interviews.
For example, the agenda might be interviewing senior business students in the spring for entry-level positions in your company. It was easy to find and set up an on-site interview, but we weren’t able to see any virtual interview functionality using an external tool, such as Zoom.
Handshake lets you schedule interviews at your partner schools, but we had difficulty finding the virtual interview option.
Events
With Handshake Core, you can register for virtual or in-person career fairs at schools in your network and use Handshake’s embedded video tool to interact with students at partner schools’ virtual career fairs.
Alternatively, you can create your own event in virtual, on-campus, off-campus or hybrid formats. It’s important to note that with Core you can create an event at one school at a time. The platform helps you manage your events in several ways. For instance, you can sort all your events by applying location and format filters. For each event you can manage RSVPs, message students who plan to attend and download a list of attendees and their resumes.
The Events module is visible clearly in the interface and, unlike the Interview module, we were able to select the virtual option and were prompted to enter an external URL to a video conferencing tool, such as Zoom or Webex.
Join a partner school’s existing career fair or create your own event at one partner school (or more than one when you upgrade to a Premium plan).
Talent List
Handshake houses a database of candidate profiles from schools you’re partnered with. You can search and apply filters to the Talent List to find candidates by school, major, graduation date and other data points. You can also save your searches, apply labels to candidates to assist with sorting and message candidates directly from the Talent List.
When testing this feature out ourselves, the Talent List was easy to find and straightforward to use. We were able to see all students from partnered institutions who have agreed to show their profiles to employers. We could click into any candidate and view their profile easily, apply a label and send the candidate a message.
The Talent List in Handshake is a database of candidate profiles associated with your partner schools.
Candidate Matching
Handshake Core displays up to 100 qualified matches for your jobs and provides the top four matches. This saves your team time from sifting through dozens or hundreds of resumes.
Candidate Contact Management
Handshake Core facilitates one-to-one and bulk messaging between recruiters and students to promote jobs, career fairs, recruiting events and send invite-to-apply messages. Recruiters can also send messages to candidates directly from within the Talent List. However, under the Core plan, you’re limited to 100 messages to candidates every six months.
You can set up templated messages to send to student candidates at various stages of the application process.
Handshake Plus Features
The following are features we’ve established or interpreted as included in Handshake Plus:
- Collaborative hiring: With Plus, your hiring at college campuses doesn’t all fall on one person. You can add two additional team members who can receive notifications and help manage the recruiting process at your partner schools.
- Unlimited candidate matches: Unlike Core which only shows up to 100 candidate matches, you get to see an unlimited number of qualified matches.
- More messaging: You also get 200 messages per month. Inbound messages from candidates do not count toward your monthly limit.
- Automated campaigns: Handshake Plus automates outreach to qualified candidates to invite them to apply and even automates follow-up messages based on the action the student takes upon receiving the original message.
- Analytics: Handshake Plus provides insight into applicants’ engagement with your brand and team members, your team’s performance and reporting on events and career fairs.
- Handshake Insights: Handshake identifies opportunities for optimizing your hiring process on the platform. Handshake Insights includes four biannual reports to compare your recruiting performance and DEI efforts against peers, improve event and campaign strategies and inform you about relevant hiring trends.
Handshake Talent Engagement Features
The following are features we’ve established or interpreted as included in Handshake’s Talent Management Suite:
- Advanced career site features: Talent Engagement career sites enable rich media content, company news feed, employee testimonials, candidate reviews and even targeted site views, depending on the major/field of the site visitor.
- Audience segmentation: Handshake Talent Engagement displays your job posts to audiences most likely to apply, according to their skills and educational background. You can create audience segments using more than 15 filters to distribute targeted messages.
- Integrations: Talent Engagement features full integrations with Greenhouse, Workday and iCIMS applicant tracking systems (ATSs).
- Handshake Insights Pro: Pro includes all Insights reports, plus a talent action plan developed exclusively for
Handshake Pricing & Plans
Handshake offers its free Core plan as well as two paid plans: Plus and Talent Engagement.
Handshake Core
Handshake Core helps your company establish a basic presence to colleges and universities that you partner with. It enables limited candidate messaging, limited candidate matching and customer support. However, you have access to unlimited events and career fairs. It’s a good starter plan if you are looking to fill a small number of entry-level positions and know a few specific institutions you want to partner with.
Handshake Plus
Handshake Plus includes more access to messaging and automated outreach to qualified candidates. You also receive an unlimited number of matches, insights into your job performance analytics, biannual reports and quicker email support responses.
This plan may be a good fit for your company if your company has many entry-level positions to fill and you’re looking to expand your search and partnership with a broader swath of postsecondary institutions. However, since the pricing is per job per month, the cost can add up quickly.
Handshake Talent Engagement
Handshake Talent Engagement is a full-service offering that not only includes the most advanced features of Handshake’s platform but also entails some strategic support and consultation services from Handshake.
This package level outsources some tasks to Handshake, such as event management and template creation and management. Therefore, it may be suitable for larger companies whose hiring needs are demanding and hiring resources are stretched thin. For example, a company that not only hires for many entry-level positions at institutions across the country but also needs to focus attention on hiring midlevel and executive positions might need more support from Handshake to focus on recruiting the specific college-student demographic.
Handshake Customer Service and Support
Handshake Core’s support entails a knowledge base, an automated chatbot and email. Support is available Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. across all United States time zones. Premium Support gets you access to live tech support, but it’s unclear if that’s via phone call, chat or video conferencing.
We sent a support ticket via email to Handshake and received a satisfactory response the following business day. This suggests that Core subscribers won’t get expedient responses for urgent issues they may encounter.
Additional Features Worth Noting
Handshake’s paid plans get you access to designating your own advocates and to making use of Handshake’s consultation services.
Advocates
Companies can enlist a nonrecruiter employee to participate in the hiring process by assigning them a role in Handshake. Handshake Advocates might be someone you think qualified student candidates will relate to and who will thus attract and convert those students to apply.
Designated advocates from your company can interact with candidates via 1:1 messaging and at career fairs. This feature is available on paid plans only, but it’s not clear from Handshake’s pricing whether this is part of the Plus or Talent Engagement tier.
Strategic Consultation Services
Handshake’s Talent Engagement plan offers a team of experts to help you get the most out of the platform. Experts help optimize your recruiting efficiency, onboarding practices and even take on some recruiting tasks for you. These include building your school lists, scheduling career fairs, developing and management templates and conducting performance audits of your hiring process as it relates to your use of Handshake.
Handshake Alternatives & How They Compare
| Handshake | Guru | Ladders Recruiter | Wellfound | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Starting Price
|
Free, then $309 per job per month
|
Free, 2.9% handling fee*
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$599 per job post, $299 per month or $239 per month when billed annually
|
Free, then $499 per month
|
|
Free Trial
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
Syndicated Job Postings
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
|
ATS
|
Available via integration in Talent Engagement tier
|
No
|
Via integration in Full Access and Enterprise plans only
|
Built-in or via integration, included
|
|
Candidate Matching
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Yes, via premium add-on
|
|
Candidate Relationship Management
|
Text and email
|
In-app messaging
|
Text and phone call
|
Slack messaging
|
|
Customizable Workflows
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Automations
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Scheduling Tools
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Interviewing Tools
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Onboarding
|
Consultation services in Talent Engagement plan
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
|
Analytics and Reporting
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
|
Templates
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
Third-party Integrations
|
Greenhouse, iCIMS and Workday in Talent Engagement plan
|
No
|
ATS integrations in Full Access and Enterprise plans only
|
Slack, plus ATS integration included for Ashby, Greenhouse, Lever and Workable
|
|
Customer Support
|
Knowledge base, email and chat
|
Support ticket, phone and email
|
Support ticket, phone, email, dedicated Customer Success Contact included and dedicated Customer Success Manager in Enterprise plan
|
Knowledge base and email
|
|
Mobile App
|
iOS and Android, for university and student users only
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
|
Read Reviews
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*Guru reimburses for the invoicing fee if you pay freelancers via e-check or wire transfer.
Handshake vs Guru
Handshake and Guru address very different needs. While Handshake is designed to help businesses recruit and hire college students or college graduates for internships and entry-level positions, respectively, Guru is a marketplace where employers post freelancing jobs and manage freelancers’ work and payment.
Handshake vs Ladders Recruiter
Handshake specializes in engaging with and hiring college students, but Ladders is a general job posting site to reach all kinds of professionals. Both offer a paid subscription service, but Ladders Recruiter offers a per-job-post plan as an alternative.
Given that Ladders Recruiter doesn’t have applicant tracking, interviewing or scheduling tools, you’ll likely want to upgrade to at least the Full Access plan. That way, you’ll be able to integrate Ladders Recruiter with your applicant tracking system.
Handshake vs Wellfound
Wellfound (formerly AngelList Talent) is oriented toward startups that are hiring. As such, Wellfound sources talent domestically and abroad for startups’ most pressing hiring needs. Candidate matching comes at an extra cost by adding the Curated product to its Recruit or Recruit Pro plans but, as a bonus, Wellfound has its own lightweight ATS built in. So, if you don’t already use one of the ATSs that Wellfound integrates with, you can use its own.
Our Expert Opinion
Handshake is a great way for companies to find talent at colleges and universities. It’s set up like a social network in which you connect with institutions to be able to connect with students who participate.
In addition, the platform addresses the unique aspect of in-person career fairs that are especially prevalent when hiring for the college student demographic. It does this by enabling recruiters to attend college-hosted fairs, creating their own events, managing attendee lists and more.
Setup
It was very easy to get started using Handshake. You enter your company email address and a password.
Ease of Use
Handshake is set up intuitively, so you can take action easily when you sign in. The only difficulty we ran into when testing Handshake was the ability to schedule virtual interviews at partner schools.
It would also be great to have access to Handshake’s mobile app as a recruiter but, at this time, the app is only for users with university email addresses, such as students or career center staff members.
Lastly, when contacting customer support, we received an effective answer to our question but we heard back the next business day which might not be fast enough for Core plan users, depending on the kind of issue you’re having with the platform.
Featured Partners
1
BambooHR
Yes
Yes
ATS
2
Pinpoint ATS
Yes
Yes
24/7 customer support, easy-to-use interface, fast and flexible workflows, hundreds of integrations
3
ClearCompany
Yes
Yes
Employee engagement
Bottom Line: Is Handshake Right for You?
Handshake is designed to help you connect with universities to identify and engage emerging talent. It’s also unique in that it provides event management features to attend and create in-person and virtual events.
Handshake is best for:
- Companies with tight hiring budgets (free Core plan)
- Companies looking to hire college students for internships
- Companies looking to hire college student graduates for entry-level positions
- Companies that want to establish ongoing partnerships with universities in their area
- Companies looking for support in reaching Gen Z candidates
- Companies looking for DE&I support in their hiring efforts
Handshake is not recommended for:
- Companies that want quick customer support (Core plan’s standard support)
- Companies looking to hire experienced professionals
- Companies with tight hiring budgets (Plus and Talent Engagement may be cost-prohibitive)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is Handshake?
Handshake is a free job posting site for companies to attract and connect with emerging talent at colleges and universities.
How do recruiters contact students?
Recruiters primarily reach out to qualified student candidates via Handshake’s messaging tool. However, email is an outreach option as well.
Is Handshake designed exclusively for college recruiting?
Yes. This means you post your job ads only to colleges and universities you’re connected with via the platform. Your ads won’t syndicate to other major job boards, which will require using a different job posting site or recruiting software solution.
