Handshake

Jada Doby's path from college STEM fair to full-time engineer at Macy's proves what we already know: the right support system changes everything. Peer sponsors, mentorship sessions, and collaborative environments. This isn't just about hiring, it's about building careers from day one. Good programs create good outcomes. Simple as that.

The job market is changing, and we’re helping define what comes next. Fast Company reports how a new kind of work is emerging alongside the rise of AI. As Christine Y. Cruzvergara says, “we’re doing our best to make sure that as much of the early talent population as possible is actually exposed to and aware of how they can be using AI in their future roles.” The story highlights our MOVE Fellowship where MA and PhDs are applying their academic knowledge to AI work. All while building new skills in research and model evaluation that has a direct impact on their studies or careers. We’re committed to helping the next generation upskill, explore new opportunities, and succeed in a job market that values skills over pedigree. Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. Link to the article in the comments.

Our design interns? Built different. This summer’s hackathon brought six big ideas to life—including: 🏆 A values-based tool to reduce job search mismatching 🏃♂️ A feature to capture small career wins 🏃♂️ A whole new way to support nontraditional job-seekers And yes, they only had 3 days. Big congrats to the design interns behind our winning projects: 🏆 Matché 🏃 Handshake Snaps – Kaitlin Chow George Kim 🏃 Launchpad – Justin Mason The next gen of tech talent is already here, and we’re lucky to learn from them. Employers: are your interns doing cool things this summer? Have them share their projects, goals, and wins to the Handshake feed ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gDhetezC

From 0 to 18M students. From one school to 1,500+ universities. Handshake started with one goal: help people start, jump start, or restart their careers. A decade in, we’re still committed to that goal.

There’s a lot of apprehension right now about the impact AI is going to have on the future of work. And while this remains an uncertain and evolving space, one thing I’m excited about is the opportunity to tap into diverse expertise–opening new channels for knowledge sharing and creating meaningful pathways for underemployed talent to contribute. Our work at Handshake AI is helping to do just that. Connecting talented grad students (MAs, PhDs, post-docs, and scholars) with AI companies that need their expertise. As Bloomberg pointed out in their article, leading AI companies need more than programmers and data scientists. They’re looking for specialized knowledge domains such as in music, plant biology, food science, and education—many of whom have found roles paying as much as $160 an hour improving AI models through our MOVE fellowship. To me, this is a reminder that the future of work doesn’t belong to any one field. It will be shaped by all of us, bringing our unique expertise and perspectives to the table to help drive meaningful innovation. Read more here: http://bit.ly/4me74q9

National Grid's event strategy is built for outcomes, not just outreach. With a lean team and a hybrid approach, they’re converting early talent with purpose—one coffee chat at a time. See how they’re doing it 👇

Handshake AI Winter internships are up! Join my team for a winter internship (start date between Dec. 1st and Jan 15), for 12-16 weeks. We're exploring LLM post-training/alignment, Data quality and efficiency and LLM Evaluation/benchmarks. If you're at #ACL2025, ping me on Whova and we can talk about it live. Read more below: https://lnkd.in/gg6a2Xc7

No one knows the state of early talent hiring better than the people doing it. In our new voice of the recruiter report, we asked hundreds of recruiters and talent leaders to share their real hot takes. The result? A candid look at what’s working, what’s breaking, and what’s next in Gen Z hiring. Download the full report ➡️ https://bit.ly/3UCnWeu

I asked Garrett Lord about sending handwritten letters and driving across the country to get Handshake's first five customers: "No one was responding to emails or taking us seriously. So we tried a few different things. Cold calling actually worked well. But the best thing we did early on was sending a box to each university, with a mug for the Director of the career services center's alma matter. We also wrote dense, handwritten letters that we spent hours researching. If you were a hockey fan, we were hockey fans. If you vacation in Florida, we were huge Florida guys. We had to write 100's of these. And our handwriting was terrible, so we paid people on Craigslist to write them.   So you'd get this box. You'd open it, and there'd be a mug from your school. Then a handwritten letter. Then under that, a manilla envelope with professional pictures of us in track jackets that a photographer friend took. And these boxes were a hit. People would finally agree to meet with us. But after all this work, we weren't gonna meet with them over Webex. So we'd get in the car and drive across the country. We put over 30,000 miles on our Ford Focus that first summer. And it was also a funny dance, because no one wanted to be the first to sign-up. We were talking to maybe 100-200 schools that summer. And that's how we eventually convinced our first five schools to sign-up for Handshake."

Great brand moments don’t end when the event does. With Handshake’s latest Events update, employers can now automatically follow up with attendees based on how they were evaluated. ✅ Loved the candidate? Send them a next step. 🧐 Not quite the right fit, but still want to stay top-of-mind? Send them to follow your Brand Page. Now, every event becomes a smarter, more strategic touchpoint—helping teams turn live engagement into long-term brand equity and stronger pipelines. It’s another way we’re building a platform where brand and recruiting work together, seamlessly. Want to help us build it? We’re hiring 👉 https://lnkd.in/eyeG3VRT