Cvent Event Management vs. Handshake Talent Engagement Suite

I've been using Cvent for over 10 years, and they have continued to grow and meet the moment. IT's great for small and large events. It is customizable, and you can make it fit just about any event you have.

Compared to bulk messaging students who are listed as 'matches' on the job listing page, the segments & campaigns I created were so helpful in identifying leads & helping to convert those leads to applicants without me having to continually follow-up with students (thank you- follow-up email feature!) For roles that require a lot of applicant flow, or for positions that require a large cohort of hires at one time, these features are perfect.

Incentivized

• Highly configurable, with a wide range of options for virtual, in-person, and hybrid events
• An optimal blend of functionality with ease of use, including a strong and well-communicated road map
• Pragmatic yet visionary incorporation of AI for enhancing event building, production, and attendee experience
• Robust and reliable, particularly given the complexity of the underlying architecture

Incentivized

• Connects us with our target audience (current college students and recent graduates).
• Connects us with a variety of career services offices, building trust in our organization.
• It provides capacity to our recruiters while also allowing us to balance volume and personalization in recruitment.

Incentivized

• The "Badges and Certificates" feature can use some work. This is where you build out your name badges, invoices, receipts, etc. The system works but the build feature is difficult to line everything up and navigate. Also, building the receipts/invoices can be difficult to adjust for when things for to multiple pages. It doesn't allow you to pre-program margins so it just continues to the top of the next page without leaving additional space.
• Processing payments for multiple registrations at once after the registrations have already been submitted could also be improved. Currently, the only opportunity you have to submit a payment for a full group is when they register initially. After that phase, if you need to enter a check payment or process a credit card after they've finalized their registration, you have to go into each attendees record to process the payment which can get tedious.
• I would like to see a functionality where we can collect actual signatures during the registration process vs. just having a check box available. For some of the more sensitive materials we need our attendees to approve of, an actual signature feature would be very beneficial.

Incentivized

• I would love if there were a better way to filter by experience. Currently, it's based on graduation date but a lot of my talent segments pick up people with 10+ years of experience that recently started or completed another degree. This is frustrating for the candidate who receives a bunch of misplaced messages and for recruiters who have to explain why they received a message about an internship they are clearly overqualified for. Can we separate grad year from years of experience in the segmentation somehow?
• I wish there were an easier way to "blacklist" candidates who were rude or expressed a sentiment of never wanting to hear from me or my company again. These are people that I don't want to accidentally include in a campaign message 6 months later.

Incentivized

I enjoy the app and what it has to offer. It makes working in events a lot easier! Before I would have to go to our warehouse and print name badges and write out different names if they needed it. Attendees also did not have access to our breakout sessions. Now, I can adjust names onsite and we can allow attendees to access our sessions before the event begins

Incentivized

It works and has been a valuable tool for recruitment and talent engagement

Incentivized

It takes a bit of work to really understand how the system works and what is connected. But it is worth it to take the time, do the training to learn. Once you get the Ah Ha moment, then everything starts to flow better, and you can see how it will work.

Incentivized

It is intuitive

Incentivized

It's not very often the platform has switched off or had errors. That only occurs when multiple people are usually in the same events making changes. On our end it usually slows the platform down , not an often occurrence

Incentivized

It works well, integrated into other platforms hasn't cause problems. However saying that it cause other platforms such as iCapture to work slower and slightly glitchy- this has been raised but for now its a put up with it type of issue. This has only recently started happening

Incentivized

The company offers 24/7 customer support, including phone, email, and chat support, to ensure that we can get help when we need it. Additionally, the platform has a comprehensive help center and knowledge base, including user guides, tutorials, and FAQs, which help us troubleshoot issues on our own. Cvent also provides training and support resources, including onboarding assistance, live training sessions, and webinars, which help us get the most out of the platform. Overall, Cvent appears to be committed to providing excellent customer support and resources to its users, which can help ensure a positive user experience and successful events.

Incentivized

Becca always responds very quickly to my questions. We had an issue where I couldn't register for a fair because another division of my company had already registered and this problem was fixed the next day. I feel like the team at Handshake Talent Engagement Suite actually cares about my experience. Not all companies do once the contract is signed! They definitely treat their customers well. I literally feel like I am their only customer.

Incentivized

Our on-site trainer was very knowledgeable in the product and gave us very important pointers on best practices and how to perform tasks in the simplest manner

Incentivized

I have used the webinars and cvent community a lot to gain more knowledge. I am usually always able to find the answers I need

Incentivized

It would have been nice during implementation if we had received more pointers on how to organize our parked report folders, libraries, etc. to avoid the mess we find ourselves in today. If we had known ahead of time the limitations we could have planned better.

Incentivized

It is a great product and valuable tool for recruitment and sourcing of talent

Incentivized

There is no other tool that offers the same range of solutions as Cvent, all under one umbrella. With minimal reliance on APIs, client and associate data are more secure, making all stakeholders more comfortable with the software. All other solutions I looked at only solved one piece of the puzzle I was dealing with.

Handshake and Untapped both have their pros and cons. The campaign features in Handshake are really unparalleled and allow you to reach a relevant and diverse set of students quickly and efficiently. Untapped has the ability to go through the profiles of individual students to really source specific people (which Handshake doesn't allow), but the filtering features needed work and it was tougher to reach a lot of students at once.

Incentivized

There are multiple people across our organisation who use CVENT Event Management. They do only use the simple features and thats mainly for registrations, but the simplicity of being able to duplicate events makes life easier for those members. They are able to duplicate events and keep them running smooth and take payments.

Incentivized

• Cvent Event Management has definitely provided great value with our exhibitors. It's a well organized system that they all trust and utilize each year now.
• Cvent Event Management has also provided positive ROI on the app front. Our clients rely on the app to share information and it's saved us a lot of money in paper printing costs!

Incentivized

• Handshake has definitely positively impacted our business objectives. Handshake pulled some data for us and we found out that 39% of our hired interns & new grads thus far followed up with us, received a message, or RSVP'd to an event on Handshake so far this year.

Incentivized