Segments

Employers

Tips and trends for modern recruiting

Find the talent you’re looking for

What’s your biggest challenge recruiting entry level talent?


Many recruiters would say it’s building a pipeline of qualified candidates.



With  active and verified students and recent grads on Handshake, you have plenty of qualified students to source—you just need the right tools to surface the specific talent you’re looking for.



Proactive sourcing is a crucial step toward building your target audience: a segmented list of qualified talent profiles whom you can then engage at scale. Learn more about why—and how—Handshake Segments helps you source qualified candidates more efficiently.

In this post:

Advantages of sourcing proactively on Handshake

Handshake data shows students want to receive sourcing messages

What are the benefits of building a tailored audience?

How to use Handshake to speed up sourcing and fill your talent pipeline

What are the best ways to engage my target talent audience?

Build your qualified early talent pipeline with Handshake

Advantages of sourcing proactively on Handshake

In the past, sourcing was pizza, posting, and hoping. Today, sourcing is proactive, intentional, and impactful. If you’re using Handshake to source qualified early talent, you’ve come to the right place.



Handshake opens up access to opportunity for students and new grads—and access to a growing network of early career talent for campus recruiting teams. Handshake is the largest, most active network for early talent job seekers in the US with  partner schools.



With helpful tools and rich signals to more precisely filter, target, and connect with prospective candidates at scale, reaching out to early talent on Handshake means you’re also able to get your brand in front of early talent at peak moments of influence when students are thinking about starting their careers. Is your brand consistently showing up and following through with talent on Handshake during their college-to-career journey?

Handshake data shows students want to receive sourcing messages

Sourcing is a critical part of any early talent strategy, regardless of your applicant volume. 

In addition to being more efficient, early talent wants to engage with employers that reach out to them with relevant opportunities.

Early-career candidates want to hear from employers

More than 80% of students want to receive at least some informational messages (e.g., emails or messages sent through a career platform) from potential employers. 

Personalization is key to message engagement

Half of students would be more likely to reply to an employer message that’s personalized to them and their interests, and 47% would be more likely to reply if the message clearly explained why the employer chose them as a recipient. 

Messages drive event attendance and job applications

Two thirds of students would be more likely to attend an event if they received a message from the employer, and 70% would be more likely to apply to a job. 

The ability to create your target talent audience is what can set you apart with targeted messaging campaigns. Once you build your target talent audience in Handshake, you can use custom templates to reach candidates at scale. 

What are the benefits of building a tailored audience?

If you’re thinking that you already have all the applicants you need, keep in mind that you can use Handshake to source pre-qualified candidates.



Put another way, you’re able to target the right talent out of a wider pool—which results in a more efficient workflow, and the opportunity to engage with the most relevant candidates possible. You can build your proactive sourcing strategy on Handshake to meet students and new grads where they are.



 

How to use Handshake to speed up sourcing and fill your talent pipeline


You can expand your access to the largest, most diverse, verified talent pool of  students and alumni by using Segments within Handshake Talent Engagement Suite. 

Use Segments to speed up filtering, targeting, and sourcing a subset of students and new grads so you can build a robust early talent pipeline for every role. Segments includes 20+ advanced filters to find the right talent, including:

Student location preference

Schools by institution type

Demographic attributes

Skills and coursework

Work authorization

If you’re not already using Handshake’s Talent Engagement Suite, you can test some of the advanced filtering to get a sense of how you can more easily surface the most relevant talent for your open roles.

What are the best ways to engage my target talent audience?

Building an audience is just the start of building a pipeline of qualified talent. With a more efficient sourcing process, you’ll be able to focus more on engaging with your audience and nurturing top early talent over time.



Consider these examples of how you can engage your target audience once you’ve built your custom segment:

Send a brand campaign inviting students who meet your criteria but may not be ready to apply yet to follow your brand page

Invite qualified talent to apply to an open role

Invite qualified talent to join a virtual or in-person event 

Keep candidates warm with scheduled messages and personalized variables 

Sourcing is about bringing your message to the right audience, at the right time, to build brand affinity and make an impact when it comes time to hire.

Build your qualified early talent pipeline with Handshake

When employers use tools like Segments in Handshake Talent Engagement Suite, they achieve outcomes like:

6.7X more responsiveness

3.7X greater brand engagement

2.2X more applications

Test out Segments talent engine to explore how you would build your candidate pool for one of your open roles.





Segments

Reach the right candidates with proactive sourcing