We’re excited to highlight our Premium solution for employers: the Talent Engagement Suite, for innovative recruiting teams to effectively engage students and alumni throughout their full college to career journey.
Through our close partnerships with leading universities and employers, we’re seeing a dramatic shift in the university recruiting landscape. Students are researching opportunities continuously throughout the year, and expect a constant stream of information and interaction. It’s time to revisit your recruiting routines and invest in your digital engagement strategy.
With the Talent Engagement Suite, your team can start effectively engaging Handshake’s network of more than 9 million students and young alumni across 600 universities in the U.S. The Suite is built on a trusted platform your team already uses — no new systems, no lengthy implementation — and removes the ‘busy work’ for your team that many tools require.
As our lead product manager on the Talent Engagement Suite, Molly Johnson, describes the offering:
“It’s really about engaging students proactively and building your brand intentionally versus just sitting back and waiting to see who comes into your pipeline.”
The 5 Dimensions of Better Student Engagement
It’s possible now to engage at every stage of a student’s career journey. With Handshake’s new Talent Engagement Suite, you can:
- Proactively drive students to your Jobs and Events with smart campaigns and segmentation. Define your hiring criteria — let’s say, STEM students who have had internships as Data Analysts — as Segments in the system, then reach the most qualified students at the right time. Scheduled Campaigns allow you to plan ahead, setting up outreach before the busy times of campus visits and interviews. Imagine arriving at a Career Fair knowing that the most ideal candidates at that college received a pre-scheduled, personalized message 24 hours earlier, while you were traveling! Or that students you meet at the booth will receive a quality follow-up automatically that evening, while you’re catching up on work emails at the hotel?
- Connect with students in a meaningful way through in-person and virtual events, plus Event Check-In. By centralizing all event activity on Handshake, you can maximize those existing campus investments by inviting the right students, downloading RSVP lists, accepting check-ins at a booth or info session, and following up right from Handshake. Virtual Events allow you to reach top talent across the nation, expanding your reach in addition to your physical campus visits.
- Highlight your authentic story with content and branding throughout the platform. Handshake allows you to personalize the content on you Employer Page and every job post, based on the student’s major. This can drive better engagement within segments you’ve historically struggled — for example, traditional employers starting to recruit software engineers.
- Build student relationships at scale. With the Candidate Journey functionality, you can understand candidates’ touch points with your company and use that rich context to guide the recruiting conversation. For example: you’ll know if a student has attended your events, when you send a personal message through Handshake.
- Become a data-driven recruiting team with proprietary analytics from the Handshake platform. Understand the effectiveness of proactive outreach with in-product Campaign results. Dive into custom reporting and market benchmarks with your dedicated Handshake resource.
Early Results from Leading Employers
Several of our most innovative employers helped pilot components of the Suite before its official launch. Box, M&T Bank, and IBM saw clear results early:
“We needed a solution like Handshake to ensure deeper engagement when we went on campus, reaching students of all backgrounds and majors, and generating qualified applicants.”
-Andy Smith, Campus Recruiting Director, M&T Bank
“I think almost all UR teams are understaffed and with the amount of inbound you get from active candidates, it can sometimes be hard to justify sourcing, but segmenting and proactive sourcing is a crucial strategy to connect with students of underrepresented talent, especially from different schools and especially as we’ve found in business roles.”
-Emily Vogel, University Recruiting Lead, Box
“We want to expand our reach to create more meaningful connections with students from all backgrounds.”
-Jeremy Buentello, former member of IBM’s University team
IBM’s virtual event through Handshake’s Talent Engagement Suite at NSBE was a huge success, directly helping them broaden their reach particularly with historically underrepresented students.
- Students from 200+ universities across the country joined the livestream
- Over 60% of attendees were part of a diversity and inclusion-focused organization, like the Black Student Union, NSBE, Society of Women Engineers (SWE), and the Latino Student Association
- 28 students from HBCUs joined