Lauren (Hansen) Holznienkemper is a staff writer and deputy editor for the small business vertical at Forbes Advisor, specializing in reviewing and testing HR, payroll and recruiting solutions for small businesses. Using research and writing skills f.
Lauren Holznienkemper Deputy Editor, SMBLauren (Hansen) Holznienkemper is a staff writer and deputy editor for the small business vertical at Forbes Advisor, specializing in reviewing and testing HR, payroll and recruiting solutions for small businesses. Using research and writing skills f.
Written By Lauren Holznienkemper Deputy Editor, SMBLauren (Hansen) Holznienkemper is a staff writer and deputy editor for the small business vertical at Forbes Advisor, specializing in reviewing and testing HR, payroll and recruiting solutions for small businesses. Using research and writing skills f.
Lauren Holznienkemper Deputy Editor, SMBLauren (Hansen) Holznienkemper is a staff writer and deputy editor for the small business vertical at Forbes Advisor, specializing in reviewing and testing HR, payroll and recruiting solutions for small businesses. Using research and writing skills f.
Deputy Editor, SMB Kiran Aditham Deputy EditorWith 20 years of experience, Kiran Aditham has navigated the field in editorial and writing, from working with major pubs like Adweek, AdAge and PSFK to now working at Forbes Advisor.
Kiran Aditham Deputy EditorWith 20 years of experience, Kiran Aditham has navigated the field in editorial and writing, from working with major pubs like Adweek, AdAge and PSFK to now working at Forbes Advisor.
Kiran Aditham Deputy EditorWith 20 years of experience, Kiran Aditham has navigated the field in editorial and writing, from working with major pubs like Adweek, AdAge and PSFK to now working at Forbes Advisor.
Kiran Aditham Deputy EditorWith 20 years of experience, Kiran Aditham has navigated the field in editorial and writing, from working with major pubs like Adweek, AdAge and PSFK to now working at Forbes Advisor.
Published: Feb 28, 2024, 3:52pm
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Handshake is one of the best free job posting sites because it focuses on connecting college students and college graduates to employers. It helps employers find the most qualified talent among those who are joining the workforce. Plus, Handshake is equipped to support employers’ diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) strategy when it comes to hiring from underrepresented populations.
Sourcing, attracting and hiring college students and college graduates for internships and full-time entry-level jobs, respectively.
Handshake is a job marketplace where employers advertise jobs and internships for college students and graduates at Handshake’s partnering colleges and universities. In addition, employers can connect with candidates via Handshake and set up virtual or in-person career fairs.
Handshake Core helps your company establish a basic presence to colleges and universities that you partner with. It enables limited candidate messaging, limited candidate matching and customer support. However, you have access to unlimited events and career fairs. It’s a good starter plan if you are looking to fill a small number of entry-level positions and know a few specific institutions you want to partner with.
Handshake Plus includes more access to messaging and automated outreach to qualified candidates. You also receive an unlimited number of matches, insights into your job performance analytics, biannual reports and quicker email support responses.
This plan may be a good fit for your company if your company has many entry-level positions to fill and you’re looking to expand your search and partnership with a broader swath of postsecondary institutions. However, since the pricing is per job per month, the cost can add up quickly.
Handshake Talent Engagement is a full-service offering that not only includes the most advanced features of Handshake’s platform but also entails some strategic support and consultation services from Handshake.
This package level outsources some tasks to Handshake, such as event management and template creation and management. Therefore, it may be suitable for larger companies whose hiring needs are demanding and hiring resources are stretched thin. For example, a company that not only hires for many entry-level positions at institutions across the country but also needs to focus attention on hiring midlevel and executive positions might need more support from Handshake to focus on recruiting the specific college-student demographic.
Handshake Core’s support entails a knowledge base, an automated chatbot and email. Support is available Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. across all United States time zones. Premium Support gets you access to live tech support, but it’s unclear if that’s via phone call, chat or video conferencing.
We sent a support ticket via email to Handshake and received a satisfactory response the following business day. This suggests that Core subscribers won’t get expedient responses for urgent issues they may encounter.
Handshake’s paid plans get you access to designating your own advocates and to making use of Handshake’s consultation services.
Companies can enlist a nonrecruiter employee to participate in the hiring process by assigning them a role in Handshake. Handshake Advocates might be someone you think qualified student candidates will relate to and who will thus attract and convert those students to apply.
Designated advocates from your company can interact with candidates via 1:1 messaging and at career fairs. This feature is available on paid plans only, but it’s not clear from Handshake’s pricing whether this is part of the Plus or Talent Engagement tier.
Handshake’s Talent Engagement plan offers a team of experts to help you get the most out of the platform. Experts help optimize your recruiting efficiency, onboarding practices and even take on some recruiting tasks for you. These include building your school lists, scheduling career fairs, developing and management templates and conducting performance audits of your hiring process as it relates to your use of Handshake.
Support ticket, phone, email, dedicated Customer Success Contact included and dedicated Customer Success Manager in Enterprise plan
Knowledge base and email Mobile App iOS and Android, for university and student users only Read Reviews See More See LessHandshake and Guru address very different needs. While Handshake is designed to help businesses recruit and hire college students or college graduates for internships and entry-level positions, respectively, Guru is a marketplace where employers post freelancing jobs and manage freelancers’ work and payment.
Handshake specializes in engaging with and hiring college students, but Ladders is a general job posting site to reach all kinds of professionals. Both offer a paid subscription service, but Ladders Recruiter offers a per-job-post plan as an alternative.
Given that Ladders Recruiter doesn’t have applicant tracking, interviewing or scheduling tools, you’ll likely want to upgrade to at least the Full Access plan. That way, you’ll be able to integrate Ladders Recruiter with your applicant tracking system.
Wellfound (formerly AngelList Talent) is oriented toward startups that are hiring. As such, Wellfound sources talent domestically and abroad for startups’ most pressing hiring needs. Candidate matching comes at an extra cost by adding the Curated product to its Recruit or Recruit Pro plans but, as a bonus, Wellfound has its own lightweight ATS built in. So, if you don’t already use one of the ATSs that Wellfound integrates with, you can use its own.
Handshake is a great way for companies to find talent at colleges and universities. It’s set up like a social network in which you connect with institutions to be able to connect with students who participate.
In addition, the platform addresses the unique aspect of in-person career fairs that are especially prevalent when hiring for the college student demographic. It does this by enabling recruiters to attend college-hosted fairs, creating their own events, managing attendee lists and more.
It was very easy to get started using Handshake. You enter your company email address and a password.
Handshake is set up intuitively, so you can take action easily when you sign in. The only difficulty we ran into when testing Handshake was the ability to schedule virtual interviews at partner schools.
It would also be great to have access to Handshake’s mobile app as a recruiter but, at this time, the app is only for users with university email addresses, such as students or career center staff members.
Lastly, when contacting customer support, we received an effective answer to our question but we heard back the next business day which might not be fast enough for Core plan users, depending on the kind of issue you’re having with the platform.
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Handshake is designed to help you connect with universities to identify and engage emerging talent. It’s also unique in that it provides event management features to attend and create in-person and virtual events.
Handshake is best for:
Handshake is not recommended for:
Handshake is a free job posting site for companies to attract and connect with emerging talent at colleges and universities.
Recruiters primarily reach out to qualified student candidates via Handshake’s messaging tool. However, email is an outreach option as well.
Yes. This means you post your job ads only to colleges and universities you’re connected with via the platform. Your ads won’t syndicate to other major job boards, which will require using a different job posting site or recruiting software solution.
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