Handshake is a rapidly growing, career-services platform, where students, employers and career centers can interact with each other. It is a resource used by colleges all over the country and one lauded for helping students find meaningful careers. This is a platform not only suitable for full-time jobs, but part-time jobs, internships and career events as well.
The remarkable thing about Handshake is how personalized and user-friendly it is. While creating an account, students can input information like their major, resume, cover letters, types of jobs they are interested in, skills, interests and so on. Then, they can create a public profile which will be accessible to employers. All they need to do is scroll through a student’s profile, and if they are interested, they will send a job offer.
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Wayne Stark, Director of Workforce Development, described Handshake in a unique way, “If you think of a quiver of arrows, each arrow is a job search strategy or a resource and students have their quiver of arrows and they’re going to shoot arrows to try to hit the bulls-eye, which, let’s say is a job; so one arrow might be looking at the big job search sites like Indeed or Career Builder, they’ll shoot that arrow and maybe hit the bulls-eye. Handshake is an arrow.”
Finding jobs is not the only thing you can do on Handshake; you can look up career events being held on campus, employers attending, which majors they are looking for and can connect with different resources. Handshake will provide information on workshops or podcasts that are job relevant, like tips on interviews, resume building or how to network.
Handshake is a convenient platform for both on and off-campus opportunities. Stark said that he always encourages students to use Handshake, “Whether they’re looking for jobs, looking for internships, trying to find out which career events are coming up because, while I’ll send lots of emails to students directly, there are other things happening on campus that they might be
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interested in. So, for example, if you’re interested in the Career Fair happening on Oct. 16, Handshake will have all the information ready for you.”
As convenient as Handshake is, it is not the only tool necessary to find the right job. Stark strongly recommends talking to career counselors and using as many different resources as possible so that students will not miss out on any opportunities.
“While Handshake is a powerful tool, students need to utilize a wide array of resources to connect with to get that job or internship. Students have to use other resources as well, like alumni networking, contacts we might have as career services professionals, meta sites, specific sites for organizations and companies,” Stark said.
