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Handshake Talent Engagement Suite vs. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Handshake Talent Engagement Suite

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AHandshake Talent Engagement Suite (TES) helps employers source, engage, manage, and build their brand with early talent at scale. Tell an impactful story and build a strong employer brand using rich media, candidate reviews, employee testimonials, and more.N/A

    LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ALinkedIn Marketing Solutions is a recently (2015) expanded marketing platform for reaching audiences through the popular Linkedin work-oriented social network that includes modules like the Lead Accelerator (supporting segmentation features to improve conversion), Sponsored Updates, LinkedIn Onsite Display, LinkedIn Network Display, and Sponsored InMail. While still at its core a social marketing engine, Linkedin Marketing Solutions now presents a more comprehensive B2B advertising platform. The…N/A
    Pricing
    Handshake Talent Engagement SuiteLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Handshake Talent Engagement SuiteLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Handshake Talent Engagement SuiteLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Considered Both Products
    Handshake
    No answer on this topic
    LinkedIn
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    86%
    Would buy again
    30 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    81%
    Delivers good value for the price
    21 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    80%
    Happy with the feature set
    28 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    84%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    16 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    9 Answers
    Features
    Handshake Talent Engagement SuiteLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Recruitment Marketing
    Comparison of Recruitment Marketing features of Handshake Talent Engagement Suite and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Feature
    Handshake Talent Engagement Suite
    8.0
    11 Ratings
    24% above category average
    LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    -
    Ratings
    Passive Recruitment Advertising8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
    Active Recruitment Advertising8.39 Ratings00 Ratings
    Employer Branding Tools7.610 Ratings00 Ratings
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    Handshake Talent Engagement SuiteLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
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    Score7.2 out of 10
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    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Handshake Talent Engagement SuiteLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (37 ratings)
    9.9
    (48 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (9 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.6
    (25 ratings)
    8.6
    (6 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Handshake Talent Engagement SuiteLinkedIn Marketing Solutions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Handshake
    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
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    LinkedIn
    Although it offered great features, we didn't really see a lot of traffic or results from the ads we placed. Working in hospitality, we had to strategically time and place our ads around holiday seasons and it can be difficult to predict a marketing campaign. Depending on your market, LinkedIn may not be the best avenue to advertise with.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Handshake
    • 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
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    LinkedIn
    • Targeting - they have done a great job of allowing you speak to ideal audiences
    • Support - dedicated customer service and account advising is always accessible and very responsive
    • Curation of professional audiences - one of the biggest advantages to the platform is that its users are for the most part are professional
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    Handshake
    • Ability to directly source and reach out to specific candidates (rather than just a whole pool with campaigns)
    • More flexibility over the way postings look to allow for creativity
    • More details about students on their profiles to make it easier to source the right candidates
    Incentivized
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    LinkedIn
    • The Campaign Manager is not good. It seems like the Campaign Manager (where you create and manage your self-serve ad campaigns) is buggy and doesn't have a good flow. Contrast with FB Ad Manager of the Google Adwords/Ads interface, which has a much more simple process to create and edits campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, audiences, budgets, etc. LinkedIn Campaign Manager seems to actively work against you trying to make changes to your campaigns.
    • LinkedIn Campaign Manager offers three options: sponsored content, InMail, and text ads. LinkedIn used to offer other ad services that you couldn't access unless you had a "managed ad account" run by LinkedIn Staff with a dedicated monthly ad spend. It seems most of those "hidden" features have disappeared, though you still have to contract with LinkedIn to offer dynamic ads. It would be better if LinkedIn empowered marketers to create the ads they want. (Perhaps with a dedicated acct. manager like how Google Ads works.)
    • This is silly, but it isn't easy to navigate to Campaign Manager. I have a bookmark for Campaign Manager because if you want to click there through LinkedIn, it takes 2 or 3 different screens to get to Campaign Manager. In my opinion, when you click the "Work" dropdown from the LinkedIn header (by your profile picture) you should have a link to Campaign Manager.
    • LinkedIn, in recent months, has made substantial changes to the Ads platform and Campaign Manager. Though these changes work to address some of the above issues, LinkedIn still has quite a ways to go before their platform is on par with their competition.
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Handshake
    It works and has been a valuable tool for recruitment and talent engagement
    Incentivized
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    LinkedIn
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Handshake
    It is intuitive
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    LinkedIn
    in terms of promoted content reporting and usability, the platform is not as flexible or easy to use compared to more established social platforms like Facebook. However, it does offer plug-ins to Google Data Studio which makes pulling and manipulating data easier. My main usability gripe comes when looking at organic performance of a company page. There isn't an easy way to export organic performance data.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Handshake
    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.
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    LinkedIn
    So, everything what I just said previously adds up to the value of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Definitely recommending it to a friend. It has its things to improve but its nothing major or nothing to worry about. So I give a 9 because it still has that, some user interface glitches that can be improved but do not damage the experience that you have with it.
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    Implementation Rating
    Handshake
    It is a great product and valuable tool for recruitment and sourcing of talent
    Incentivized
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    LinkedIn
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Handshake
    I think Handshake is similar to Linkedin Recruiter in a lot of ways. The main differentiator for me/our company is who we are trying to reach or target. LinkedIn is not an easy platform to find early careers talent on, so Handshake has been the best way for us to connect with schools, register for events easily, advertise to college students and reach them where they are!
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    LinkedIn
    If you want more precision in B2B targeting, then LinkedIn is without question the better alternative. However, as I established before, I've rarely seen LinkedIn campaigns be successful for anything other than brand awareness/thought leadership. And that's almost 100% what Twitter is for. Twitter campaigns almost always have a cheaper CPC AND CPM than LinkedIn and accomplish the same thing, so I would say go with Twitter. At times LinkedIn campaigns are just so you can tell someone at a higher level that you did precise targeting to the exact audience they wanted and check that box, because it's easier for them to understand how you'd do well on LinkedIn, and more difficult to tell that story on Twitter. But I honestly prefer Twitter and its platform for B2B awareness campaigns. Heretic, I know, but it's how I feel after several years of experience with both. Facebook is bottom of the barrel for B2B in my mind, so I'm not really going to discuss it. I would take LinkedIn over Facebook for many reasons, but Facebook is an option too, but more for SMB and just covering all bases, not as a primary choice for B2B marketing.
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    Return on Investment
    Handshake
    • Summer internship recruiting for hard to fill roles has grown to be much easier. Without Handshake Talent Engagement Suite, we would be left scrambling to specific school job boards.
    • Hosting a simple one-hour informative event and reaching a large audience has helped with brand awareness. We don't necessarily see immediate obvious results but have been content with our ability to connect with underclassmen, getting them excited to apply for internships in a year or two.
    • Creating a talent segment and sending campaign messages is much more efficient and effective than reaching out to individual candidates with cold calls/emails.
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    LinkedIn
    • We have seen a marked increase in inbound agent calls since we began LinkedIn marketing.
    • LinkedIn marketing is an excellent way to put your content in front of people that are actually going to read it, this has led to a major increase in our content being consumed and acted on.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots