Handshake is well-suited to employers trying to hire a small number of students for internships or first jobs after graduation

Until the Covid pandemic forced the temporary closure of virtually all college and university campus worldwide, little had changed in the world of college and university recruitment. The vast majority of students were hired through on-campus recruiting by large, enterprise-level organizations. To be sure, there were some improvements regarding the technology, including the introduction of the pre-Internet bulletin board JobTRAK in the late 1980s. It became a website in the 1990s, was purchased by Monster in 2000, rebranded as MonsterTRAK, then rebranded as Monster Campus, then shut down. Other, somewhat similar career service office management platforms include 12twenty, Gradleaders, Graduway, Handshake, and JobTeaser.

As employers navigate the ever-evolving landscape of recruitment platforms, understanding the specific functionalities and audience reach of each becomes paramount. Handshake is the most popular career service office management platform and so holds a unique position in this landscape. However, its characteristics may limit its reach, and understanding these limitations can aid employers in crafting more effective recruitment strategies.

Handshake was designed to connect employers with students seeking internships and first jobs post-graduation, regardless of the school the student attended. Its infrastructure resembles the approach to college and university recruiting favored by career service offices, which were its initial clients. These offices prefer to control access to what they often see as “their” students, which means that employers using the Handshake system to hire students at say 20 schools are essentially using one interface to reach those 20 different audiences and depending on the career service offices at each of those schools to have the time to review the requests by the employer and to grant them.

In other words, for employers, the Handshake platform is dependent on the ability and willingness of each of its university partners to take the necessary actions to approve and therefore make accessible to the students the job postings of the employers. In addition, although Handshake has done an admirable job of establishing relationships with many institutions in the U.S., most post-secondary schools even in the U.S. do not use Handshake and very few outside of the U.S. do either. As a result, when employers consider using Handshake, it’s crucial to understand that its reach is far from universal.

The visibility of job postings on Handshake is confined to the pool of students currently enrolled at universities that use Handshake as their primary career services platform. Furthermore, these postings must first be approved by the universities’ career service offices before they are made accessible to students. This creates an additional barrier, often influenced by the capacity of these understaffed offices, which can potentially delay or even prevent the visibility of job postings to the intended audience.

Therefore, employers who are solely relying on Handshake to recruit interns or soon-to-be graduates may find their job postings’ visibility and resultant applications limited. Despite Handshake’s intention to streamline the recruitment process, its reach remains constrained to a relatively small number of schools and students. The requirement for university approval adds an additional layer of complexity, potentially limiting the effectiveness of the platform.

To be sure, Handshake has proven to be quite popular amongst employers of all sizes. When we talk with employers who are looking to hire a few students here or there, the primary benefit they mention for advertising those jobs on Handshake is that it is free to advertise a single job posting ad on Handshake. However, when we also ask how many candidates applied to those jobs, literally most of the employers tell us none. Not a small number, not a couple, but none.

Handshake appears to be aware of the problem as it recently introduced a new plan. Employers can advertise a job for free on Handshake, but it describes that option as being for “individuals and teams looking to try Handshake for free.” In other words, go ahead and spend time posting a job but don’t expect to get any responses. If you want to get some applications, the new, “Plus” plan at $309 a month seems better suited to your needs. I’ve never talked with an employer who wants to advertise a job. That’s a means to an end. What they want isn’t the ad. What they want are enough applications from qualified candidates that they can hire the people they need. For employers who have enough time to manually send messages to 200 candidates a month as well as post a job that, hopefully, the career service offices will approve, it seems likely to me that they’ll hire a person here or a person there. If so, the $309 seems to be a good investment.

But what about employers who aren’t looking to hire a person here or a person there but, instead, want to hire dozens or even hundreds? The cost to large employers to use Handshake is, quite frankly, a mystery. Their website isn’t at all transparent about their pricing which, when I’m a buyer of anything, makes me pretty leary. Are they going to charge me a lot more than another, similar buyer simply because the other buyer was better at negotiating? If not, why are they hiding what they charge? From what many of our employer customers have told us, the cost to large employers for what Handshake calls its Enterprise package is at least $120,000 and up to $250,000 per year and employers must sign up for at least a year even if they’re only hiring for a few months.

So, what’s a large employer to do if it wants to hire dozens to hundreds, maybe in different countries, maybe in different languages, and doesn’t have $100,000 to $250,000 for an annual contract with Handshake? For these employers, an effective recruitment strategy necessitates exploring additional platforms that offer broader accessibility, enabling employers to reach a wider and more diverse pool of potential candidates. Now, that’s not to say that employers should always use a job search site like College Recruiter, which believes that every student and recent graduate deserves a great career, instead of using Handshake. There may be times when Handshake is a better tool, and may be times when a College Recruiter is a better tool. And there may be times when using both make the most sense.

College Recruiter’s employer customers tend to be large in terms of hiring needs. They’re hiring at scale, meaning dozens or even hundreds a year. They’re often multinational with hiring needs not just in the U.S. but also in Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, and elsewhere. Some of those multinationals are hiring in countries where most people speak Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, or another language. Most of our customers are looking to hire candidates with at least some post-secondary education, perhaps certain degrees or majors, and with zero to five years of experience instead of maybe just an internship for a couple of months. Some prefer to advertise on a traditional, duration-basis such as $X for Y months or Z postings, but more and more prefer to pay for results, meaning on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-application (CPA) basis.

If any of that sounds like your need, let’s talk. Just fill in the form below and the appropriate person from College Recruiter will get right back to you.