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Trends & Insights

4 key takeaways from the Summer 2022 Handshake Feedback Survey

Learnings from our semi-annual feedback survey with over 600 Handshake partners.

At Handshake, we conduct a semi-annual feedback survey to:

  • Gauge our team’s performance
  • Identify areas of opportunities to better align our work with the objectives of our partners.

This summer’s survey garnered 855 responses from over 600 partner institutions—ranging from directors of career offices to employer relations to those in career coaching and advising roles. This was the highest number of responses we’ve ever received—we appreciate everyone taking the time to respond and provide their insightful feedback!

4 key takeaways from the survey

1. Our partners trust Handshake

84% of our partners are proud to be a Handshake partner. We are also excited to see 91% of our partners agree that Handshake’s value to their institution is clear. We’re grateful for this strong validation of the partnership we’ve cultivated with your teams.

2. Our partners value the knowledge of our support team & relationship managers

Providing a positive, personal experience for partners is key to our success. In this survey, we continued to see strong validation of the work of our support team and relationship managers.

87% of our partners said our support team is professional and courteous, and cares about solving the issue at hand. 83% of our partners said that their inquiries were resolved in a timely manner. This was one of the support team’s largest score improvements (+4%) compared to the survey we ran in December 2021.

Meanwhile, 90% of our partners value the product expertise that our relationship managers provide. 86% of partners felt that their relationship manager provided value by building a relationship with their team. Compared to the survey we ran in December 2021, this was one of our biggest areas of improvement with a 10% lift.

3. We need to continue involving our partners in shaping Handshake’s long-term vision

Our success depends on engagement and participation from our education partners. Our long term vision is to provide students with more access to opportunities—a full 78% of partners are on board with this vision. But we know that the path to get there requires many other decisions along the way. To ensure alignment, we will continue to share plans and research about our product while also creating space for feedback and tough questions.

To dive deeper into our vision, check out a full list of resources here.

4. We have an opportunity to drive more awareness and excitement around Handshake resources

83% of our partners find Handshake to be a reliable source of thought leadership in the early career and education-to-employment space. However, 15% of survey respondents also said they don’t engage with Handshake Network Trends—a key component of our thought leadership work. We want to ensure our partners know about this work we’re doing and ensure they find it useful.

One way we’ve already tried to help here: earlier this spring, we launched a new section on our blog called Network Trends. It’s a new iteration of our longer-form Handshake Network Trends reports, covering topics in early talent recruitment and employment. The blog posts are shorter and more digestible while still providing relevant insights on early talent and market trends.

Similarly, we noticed 17% of survey respondents don’t use Handshake Academy, our training hub. Handshake Academy is an excellent resource to help onboard new team members, or help longtime Handshake users brush up on skills—we highly recommend checking it out.

We recently updated our Reports & Analytics training course in Handshake Academy, which helps you learn about everything from pre-build dashboards to custom, multi-layered reports. We also recently launched a course on signal boosting via employer collections—it covers how your team can highlight unique employers to your students. We’ll continue adding new course material in the coming weeks and months—keep an eye on your inbox for updates!

We want to thank everyone for taking the time to fill out our survey; your feedback and continued partnership are truly invaluable in everything we do.

Level the playing field for your students