Talent Engagement Suite

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Handshake 101 for employers

Explore how to hire qualified talent on Handshake by:

• Building your brand to attract early career job seekers with a dynamic company profile and posting on the feed
• Sourcing candidates with precision targeting to send messages that are more relevant and authentic
• Connecting with Gen Z on the platform they trust with event and RSVP management, messaging tools, and more

On-demand demo: Talent Engagement Suite

Lean team, big impact: How Manassas City Public Schools achieved a 25x boost in applicants.

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Find the talent you’re looking for

MoLo Solutions is a transportation and logistics company, and its hiring goals are a moving target, too. But even with ever-changing industry and market conditions, MoLo’s talent team understands the importance of maintaining their brand recognition and building a consistent candidate pipeline. When their needs change, they’ll be prepared.

Caitlin Roth, Manager, Talent at MoLo sat down with Handshake to discuss how her team’s early talent attraction strategy is both responsive to the market and proactive for the future.

Can you describe your early talent hiring program?

Our early talent hiring program is ever changing. Our goals can be as high as hiring over 300 people in one year, but they're always a moving target because our hiring goals are actually very dependent on the transportation market. We’re typically hiring for entry level sales and customer service, evergreen positions as well as summer internship programs.


The biggest challenge that our industry is facing has to do with the transportation market, because it’s very dependent on the economy. But even in times of uncertainty, my team understands the importance of maintaining our brand recognition among students, and building a consistent pipeline of candidates…so that when our needs do change, we are prepared.

Let’s dig into how your broad school network enables scalable outreach and high-touch candidate engagement. Last year MoLo received applications from 318 of your partner schools, a 119% increase from the previous year. Can you speak to how your school partner strategy has helped you achieve the quantity, quality, and diversity that you were looking for?

With such a lean team, it is not feasible for us to travel to all of the schools that we receive applications from. We typically travel regionally to colleges and universities located near our offices, but School Explorer has been a great tool within Handshake that my team has used to determine which schools we visit in person and virtually. There are so many great search functionalities within School Explorer that we’ve used to research which schools have supply chain and sales programs, diversity and inclusion focused organizations, specific locations students are interested in. Then we’re able to target our campaigns and messages, for example, to those students saying that we know they're interested in those areas.

How you think about the schools you’ll visit in-person vs. where you’ll do virtual events, and can you give us a sense of the types of events you host?

Since we typically only travel regionally, we really leverage Handshake to host a lot of virtual events at schools that are located all across the country. We've hosted informational branding sessions to talk about who MoLo is and what we do, since third party logistics isn’t as well-known as other industries. We've done intern and alumni meet and greets, and skill based events where we've taught students sales skills, networking skills, resume building skills so that they can walk away from the events with something beneficial to them and their professional development. We've also hosted a lot of underrepresented group focus panels through Handshake, like with our Women in Supply Chain ERG. So that's something I'm really proud of.

Tell us about your "Shadow Day" event, and how you’ve used Handshake to source students for this opportunity.

This is an experience where students get to come visit our Chicago office and see what a day in the life looks like working at MoLo. Not only do you get an understanding of the industry, you get to see the positions that you could potentially be working in, and experience our culture firsthand. We use Segments to source candidates who are located in Chicago or whose location preferences indicate Chicago, who also have an interest in the transportation industry. That made the invitations really segmented and ensured that we were inviting the right people to build those relationships with. 

We invite a range of students from first years to seniors, so we start that early talent pipeline and the relationships with those students, but then can capture the juniors and seniors that are eligible for our internship and full time opportunities as well.

Two smart actions that have resulted in successful proactive sourcing for MoLo have been sending campaigns and hosting events. This is incredible: you’ve seen a 94% increase in job views and a whopping 477% increase in event RSVPs! Can you share how your high-touch outreach strategies have helped you build your brand, fill your pipeline, and see ROI?

My team and I have gotten really creative with our messaging in terms of subject lines, formatting, and content. We even got the idea to do this by attending several Handshake webinars to better understand how to attract Gen Z candidates, and then use that information to tailor the messaging in our Campaigns to be very personalized and specific to what these candidates are looking for.


But it's about so much more than just sending the right messages. It's about sending them to the right people. So using tools like Segment filters and Top Matches within Handshake helps us manage our outreach to students to promote MoLo leading up to the events and fairs that we're attending or hosting to make sure that we're meeting the right people. Which ultimately maximizes our ROI.

In 2024, MoLo received a Handshake Early Talent Award—congrats! Can you tell us how you’re building a culture that attracts students and recent grads?

I’m incredibly proud of my team's work over the past year and so grateful for the recognition we've received for the experience we create both for our candidates and our employees that we're bringing into the organization every single year. We've done so much research, you know, through Handshake webinars and through our own surveys to understand what our current employees want and need to be successful, and what Gen Z new hires and interns are looking for. And we are always implementing that feedback and the information and data. 

I'm really proud to be a part of an organization like MoLo that is people first, and truly believes in hands on training, support, and mentorship so that we can set up all of our interns and new hires for the best successful careers that they could have ever imagined.

Learn more about MoLo’s award-winning program.




Staying prepared through market conditions: Q&A with MoLo Solutions on building a consistent candidate pipeline

As one of the world’s largest food companies with more than 30,000 employees, General Mills seeks top talent to support its purpose of making food the world loves. 

Recruiting at college campus events has been a successful way for General Mills to achieve its talent acquisition strategic goals, from exposure to hire. And when in-person opportunities aren’t available, hosting virtual events has been a great extension to their traditional recruitment. In fact, about one-third of their early talent hiring is a result of having a strong virtual events strategy.

General Mills’ Campus Talent Acquisition and Talent Brand Leader, Elizabeth Diley, sat down with Handshake to chat about best practices for campus recruiting events, and the impact of brand building with early talent during the most formative period of career discovery.

Advice for planning campus recruiting events that convert

What

General Mills has developed a dynamic events strategy to educate students about career opportunities within the company. This comes to life through sharing practical advice, storytelling, and authentic interaction with current employees throughout the business. For example, through General Mills events, students can practice their networking skills, hear about the company’s sustainability efforts and impact, or get interviewing tips.

Advice: Host events that are true to your brand. If students don’t RSVP or show up to your events, take a look at your messaging content, and even your culture. What attracts a student to an event is informed by more than just an email invite.

Who

General Mills partners with Handshake to reach students at schools across the US. General Mills is represented at events by employees across the business, including members of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), former interns, and C-level executives.

Advice: Highlight your people as much as your product. Part of bringing your story to life is about who is telling your company’s stories.

Where

While General Mills has a strong in-person presence at their set of core schools, they maximize resources and reach through virtual events—ensuring they tap into top talent nationwide. Virtual events make it easier to scale their search and identify qualified top talent at the most schools possible. For example, one of their recent virtual recruitment events attracted more than 1,500 registrants.

Advice: Are there regions, groups, or schools where you need to do some more education on opportunities that your company offers to early career talent?

When

Their events strategy is tied to their recruiting cycle, which includes an event in the spring when summer internships open up. This timing offers students early access to apply, which ensures events are converting into pipeline for the talent team. Even though events are hosted during peak campus recruiting season, General Mills adapts their virtual strategy throughout the year based on business needs and hiring requirements.

Advice: Events should result in inbound applications during peak recruiting seasons and should be utilized for awareness and exposure during off-peak seasons. Every year, your events can look different depending on where you want to hone in.

Why

General Mills’ strategy is driven by the desire to cultivate talent and foster a deeper connection with students who are both potential employees and consumers of their products. By presenting their company culture in an authentic and engaging manner, General Mills aims to attract top talent who resonate with their values.

Advice: Poll students for feedback after events and look to those results for where you can improve—or to show your leadership.

A virtual events strategy that translates to ROI

General Mills can attribute a lot of their candidate conversion to their events strategy. Of course, for a company whose brands are in a majority of people’s homes, their name recognition is admittedly a door opener. But that doesn’t mean students know what to expect from the application process, the employee experience, or know how a brand comes to life through its workforce.

General Mills has built a college recruiting event strategy that offers students ways to navigate their career paths with confidence and clarity. That translates to ROI for students, and ROI for General Mills.

Learn more about why General Mills is one of the best places to launch early careers.

General Mills’ strategy for successful campus recruiting events

Lamb Weston, a global potato product supplier, has made its brand more recognizable to students on Handshake despite its lean team of three university recruiters—with 20,000+ applications in 2023 and a 22% job view to application rate.

So, how does Lamb Weston achieve campus recruiting efficiencies with its small but mighty team—and earn a 2024 Handshake Early Talent Award alongside brands with household names?

Check out this Q&A with Nate Pedronan, Talent Acquisition Project Manager at Lamb Weston, for key takeaways on:

Developing a consistent messaging and outreach strategy that makes a lesser known brand memorable to students

Leveraging hybrid tactics by blending digital engagement with on-site presence

Using Handshake data to test messaging tactics and expand school partnerships to build a stronger pipeline

Providing a comprehensive internship program that includes mentorship, projects that are meaningful to the business, and day-in-the-life exposure

Q&A: Small team, big wins with Lamb Weston

Can you share how your small team achieves impressive engagement levels, particularly through messaging with students?

It always starts with the team, right? We have a small team of three that hires for 30-50 interns every year. Having a strategy and message with that team is first and foremost. It's our mission as a group to inspire passion for early career development. And I think that carries on through all of our messaging, how we interact with students when we're on campus. If you don't have a team that's saying the same thing…it becomes very confusing in terms of the candidate experience.

Tell us about how you evolved your campus recruiting strategy to include digital engagement.

We learned a lot from COVID. Campus was shut down, we couldn't do anything on-site. So we moved our strategy to fully virtual [and asked ourselves]: Are there virtual internships that we can do? And if there are virtual internships, how do we reach those students? I'm happy there's a return to campus, but we were still able to take our lessons learned from moving to digital. And now we have this cool hybrid approach.

How do you attract students to jobs in the manufacturing industry?

You may not have heard of our company before, but I guarantee you, if you have ever eaten a French fry in your life, you probably have eaten one of our products.


It's funny because you know, we go on campus and our booth always gets like this weird side eye if they've never seen us before…like, “tell me why I care about potatoes!” But everybody likes French fries, so it's hard to not have fun with it. They'll remember that crazy potato company that invited you to a virtual info session and had really animated people excited about french fries.

Your job locations are primarily outside of major metro areas. How do you build a  pipeline of students interested in working where your plants are?

Our plants are located primarily in the Pacific Northwest and in some rural locations where it might be hard to find talent. Historically there was a list of schools that business leaders would tell us to go to because they're in our backyard. But we're pigeonholing ourselves by just looking at these schools. We were able to leverage Handshake to open up our radius to where we can’t make it on site.

For example, students that might be from our local area but are going to school somewhere else—we were missing that candidate pool. What about students that might be coming from military backgrounds that genuinely are open to relocating? We’ve used messages to find interested students from a variety of different locations, not in our backyard. We started to incorporate that into our on-site strategy and say, "hey, Handshake data is telling us candidates from [a certain school] want to apply." And it's been hugely successful. We've been able to hire interns from different schools we never had before.

What messaging tactics have you learned work well to engage students?

Before we go on-site, we're sending out messages to announce that we'll be there on site. We're hosting virtual info sessions to highlight, not just "hey, we have jobs" but "hey, if you're an engineer, join this info session where we’ll have an engineer talk about engineering…and by the way, we are hiring for internships, come meet us at the booth and learn more."

We’ve learned from Handshake that we have a fairly strong open rate in the market. We do a lot of subject line testing, maybe throw a French fry emoji. 🍟 We test, test, test, then learn from mistakes and talk about it as a group.

Messaging that might work for the main company website doesn’t necessarily resonate with somebody looking for a job, or an early career candidate looking for their first experience. 

How do you make career fairs more memorable for students?

You have five minutes, students are half listening to you, they just want to give you their resume and then move on to the next booth to get swag, right? You need to maximize the time. With a brand like ours, we're not a household name, so we need to work pretty hard at making that type of digital and in person experience memorable.


Even through our swag, our messaging is consistent. When we go on campus we bring this squishy French Fry box with QR codes that go to our career site. Blending digital with on site was pretty critical for us and figuring out what that healthy medium is.

Can you share what makes your internship program so special for students?

Developing strategies aligning with the business has been pretty critical for us. Our internship program is about 12 weeks. We always get a mentor who is responsible for creating the Capstone project that each intern is responsible for. [Mentors are] who are going to convert our interns into full time hires. We provide other opportunities like “learning from leaders” presentations because if we’re going to hire an intern, we want them to understand not just their job or their project, but how does their project fit into the bigger picture. 

And you've got to have fun activities for everyone too. The intern program includes tours of what we call our Willy Wonka French Fry Tour factory—interns get to taste test, see how fries are made, where our food scientists sit. We actually fly interns out to our farms to see where potatoes are grown, and provide them housing relocation assistance.



Scale your small team and win big

Lamb Weston uses hybrid engagement strategies to tell a consistent brand message throughout the candidate experience, proving that even lesser known brands with small teams can win big with early talent. 

Editor’s note: This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.


