Be sure to give Handshake a fair shake!
January 26, 2023
Be sure to give Handshake a fair shake!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Handshake Talent Engagement Suite
Our company has very large early career hiring needs nationwide with only a handful of recruiters to manage events, candidate inflow, etc. We utilize Handshake in an effort to reach as many students as possible. Handshake allows us to be strategic in how we use it: getting more traction at our events via campaigns for career fairs, creating segments for candidates interested in hard-to-sell markets, direct messaging students who meet our qualifications at schools we are connected with but won't be able to hit physically on-campus. Overall, Handshake has allowed for us to offer more solutions to our internal clients and creative ways to dig into a larger, diverse applicant pool.
Pros
- Scheduled campaigns look like direct messages and are customizable to tie to specific events & jobs - we've had great success in responses!
- The job postings we are able to create are easy to read, can encompass all of our locations, and lead candidates directly back to our website to officially apply.
- The company profile is robust and allows us to include testimonials, news articles, etc. and really earn candidates' trust as they are scrolling through.
- The fact that schools can have us register for events and fairs in Handshake as well as send updates through that, makes it so much easier to have everything in one place!
Cons
- I've found it's hard to narrow down segments to get specific. For example, there is no "structural" engineering or "geotechnical" engineering major selection so just going off what students may or may not put on their profiles doesn't pull great results. The location preference option is also great but has caused issues for us because it pulls from locations that students apply to (even if the job had more than one listed), so they don't necessarily note it on their profile or actually want every place the system pulls.
- The inbox feature is great for replies, but hard to come back to any that are already opened. I receive dozens of messages at a time and a tick of the system that can be irritating is that each time I reply to an individual message, it takes me back to the top of my inbox and shows my reply as unread.
- I think the tagging could be beefed up to allow campaigns/messages to filter out or in people that have certain tags (or just unselect people in general). We've on several occasions accidentally messaged candidates we didn't want to because we can't see who is included in the bulk list.
- It'd be really nice to be able to just search candidates by name, school, degree, etc. in the system without having to make a segment too!
- 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.
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!
Do you think Handshake Talent Engagement Suite delivers good value for the price?
Not sure
Are you happy with Handshake Talent Engagement Suite's feature set?
Yes
Did Handshake Talent Engagement Suite live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Handshake Talent Engagement Suite go as expected?
I wasn't involved with the implementation phase
Would you buy Handshake Talent Engagement Suite again?
Yes
Comments
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