Handshake is a new career management system that St. Bonaventure University’s Career and Professional Readiness Center has begun using to connect their students with future employers. The CPRC decided to make the switch from Simplicity to Handshake this semester as its main service to lead students into the professional world after finding many of the recruiters that visited the campus used the site.
“All of student employment is now being done on Handshake” said Mary Pezzimenti, Student Employment and Recruiting Coordinator. “Every student has an account. Once you log in and start uploading things to your profile and making it more personalized, you will better your chances of getting employed.”
Using their MySBU credentials to create an account, students are able to upload a resumé to their profile and quickly apply to the job of their choosing. The CPRC has emphasized that students should personalize their profile as much as possible because many employers search student profiles to find a candidate that would be the best fit for their needs.
Handshake is really comprehensive,” said Pamela Ferman, Career and Professional Readiness Center director. “You are creating a profile for employers to see. You are allowed to connect with [an] employer. You are allowed to search and explore opportunities, search companies, see student feedback on those companies, as well as look at the different positions that companies have available.”
Handshake has a multitude of categories that break down career opportunities. Most notably, these options include on-campus jobs, employers actively recruiting on campus, most reputable companies and trending internships at SBU. Students are able to search different employers to find a job specific to their education and interests. Anyone who has worked for companies that are on Handshake is able to rate his or her experience and leave comments expressing their one’s opinions.
Handshake was developed for schools similar to St. Bonaventure. It was founded by several Michigan Tech students who felt their distance from major cities to be hindering in their job search process. Since its founding in 2013, Handshake’s user-base has skyrocketed to over 500 schools and has quickly become the leading career-service for colleges and universities across the country.
The goal of Handshake is to be able to connect employers with students in a different way,” said Ferman. “They use the system with a lot of artificial intelligence as well as allowing some of the smaller schools in more secluded regions to be able to participate in some of the larger recruiting efforts with some of the companies that may not think to be involved on our campus.”
Through the service, students are also able to make an appointment with the career center and track the on-campus events that they have attended.
We will have a better sense of how to work with students, see things that they have engaged with in our office and understand what a student has done to better your chances and professionally develop yourself with some of the services that we provide,” expressed Ferman.
The CPRC encourages students to actively search Handshake throughout the semester because an increasing amount of opportunities are coming in every day.
In addition to implementing Handshake across the St. Bonaventure campus, the CPRC has also switched to EverFi, an electronic I-9 form, for financial side of employment. As students apply for on-campus jobs, they are required to fill out paperwork as they would for any off-campus job.
One of the major reasons for the conversion was due to the issue that many international students were barred from working on campus.
“One of the reasons why we moved to EverFi this year is because if a student has a certain visa status they are not able to be employed by the university,” said Ferman.
EverFi is able to serve as a secure form of employment that was not previously available to students.
By Julia Schneider, Staff Writer
schneije18@bonaventure.edu
