8 ways to save time recruiting early talent on Handshake

Your workforce is changing, fast. There’s an impending retirement boom. Filling seats takes more time and budget than you can afford. The talent shortage isn’t going anywhere, and the market is too competitive to poach mid-level talent.

If you fall behind in attracting Gen Z today, how will you stay relevant?

By using Handshake.

You may already know that Handshake can help you solve your biggest early talent recruiting challenges, but you might not know these 8 ways to save time and money by leveraging Handshake's unique platform and network.

Check out answers to these frequently asked questions; hopefully, we'll make your job easier so you can make greater impact!

1. Can I recruit new graduates into my industry?

Entry-level hiring is ramping up in a variety of industries. For example, government and construction have been increasing their entry-level technical job openings. Students with technical skills are showing a greater interest in more industries, and outside of the coastal hubs they’ve prioritized in the past.

However, if you’re recruiting for an industry that’s not digitally transforming at the same pace as others, you can use Handshake to find talent to fill any type of role! In fact, the most popular major of the Class of 2023 is Business Administration.

2. Can I source early talent, alumni, career re-starters, and more?

Don’t limit your Handshake postings to just internships. Handshake’s network includes millions of alumni who are using Handshake to find their second or third job. Given that, there are also recent grads, grad students who have work experience, learners in bootcamps and certificate programs, career re-starters, and so many more who shatter the stereotype of who you may think of when you hear “student.”

3. How does 1 platform help me fill reqs and save time?

If you’re hiring entry-level and early career talent, and you’re not using Handshake, you’re spending money and time on tools or processes where there isn’t a critical mass of early talent. To put it another way, the most efficient recruiting teams use Handshake to streamline their roles in the hiring process, reach targeted groups with messaging campaigns, and fill their internships, entry-level jobs, and other early career positions requiring 0-5 years of experience.

4. Can I post any type of req?

To attract early talent and fill your full-time entry-level pipeline, you’ll want to post on Handshake—the largest early career job search platform in the US. To illustrate, if you’re hiring for any of the following types of roles, Gen Z is on Handshake looking at you!

✔️Internships

✔️Full-time jobs

✔️Part-time jobs

✔️Fellowships

✔️Apprenticeships

5. I have limited bandwidth. How can I expand school partnerships?

90% of the top 500 4-year schools in the US use Handshake. A growing number of community colleges, bootcamps, and apprenticeship programs do, too. Because Handshake is embedded directly into each school’s career services center, it’s where students come to find jobs that they know are truly for them in an environment they trust. Top employers create school agnostic strategies and discover new pools of early talent using Handshake.

6. How can I use recruiting events to engage more diverse candidates?

To recruit diverse candidates, the ability to host or attend virtual career fairs and recruiting events at any partner school is critical. Handshake Network Trends data has found that the majority of women and students from underrepresented groups actually prefer virtual touch points during the recruitment process.

Scaling and streamlining your fairs and events virtually can help you partner with more schools—and tap into overlooked pools of diverse students. Coupled with the fact that virtual events and fairs help you save on-campus time and spend to make your revenue goals and increase your efficiency.

7. Can I send messaging campaigns year-round to engage early talent?

Raise your hand: which of the following best describes your talent acquisition strategy?

🖐 Seasonal

🖐 Just-in-time

🖐 Always-on

Think beyond summer internships. You can recruit seasonally and “always-on” to build the most engaging early talent acquisition program and diversify your candidate pool. As such, employers that see the most success with their early talent programs use Handshake to build their employer brand year-round.

"Students graduate from college 3 times a year. By understanding that, we can build a stable pipeline that doesn’t react to market shifts. Developing students through our programs fill our workforce pipeline with high-quality talent who already understand our client’s needs and share our values. They tend to be more engaged, get promoted faster, and stay longer.”

Hear more from Jamie K., Charles Schwab’s Senior Campus Team Manager for Talent Acquisition

Every time a new college semester starts, you get a new batch of students to message, new graduates, and more alumni—all of whom are on Handshake looking for full-time jobs. Generally, it's a best practice to engage 1st and 2nd-year students so that they become aware of your brand early in their college-to-career journey. Given that, an always-on strategy can convert students into interns and, eventually, interns into full-time hires.

8. How can I build our brand recognition with students and new graduates?

Brand awareness with early talent is a common struggle across industries. For example, are you expanding to a new geographic market? Did you re-brand? Are there innovative roles for recent grads with tech skills—but you’re not a “tech” company? To differentiate your brand and attract the right candidates, check out how you can:

🤩 enhance your Handshake Company Profile

💡become more creative with events

📈 get data on which job descriptions resonate with Gen Z, and

✍️ customize messaging campaigns to your target audiences.

Companies that recruit Gen Z on Handshake know that standing out with creative events and relationship building can help you compete for top talent. Regardless of the branding challenge you’re tackling, Handshake helps your organization directly reach students and recent grads who got their first job, or who have worked 2-3 years and are now looking for their next opportunity.

Find out what else you can do on Handshake

Handshake is the only all-in-one early talent recruiting platform. If you’re not using Handshake for your day-to-day recruiting as well as for longer-term talent acquisition in the ways described above, you might be looking in the wrong places for talent, wasting time on administrative labor, and overpaying to source through other means.

Why recruiting early talent is key to your company's success

With 4M+ college graduates entering the workforce each year, attaining long term competitive advantage starts by engaging early talent.

Read on

Handshake helps employers recruit early talent better. Talk to us about your pain points. We’ll show you how to resolve them, using Handshake.