Login Information
Vist HandShake to log in. The email to log in currently is under intern@votesmart.org and the password can always be changed when needing access or turning over ownership.
School Network Management
This shows what schools the organization is currently interacting with and maintenance behind them. This is found once you log in under relationships → schools → three tabs. These decisions from schools and if they approve, deny, or pend your posting are based on a Trust Score in Handshake. The following three options are the three different categories for interacting with schools on HandShake.
Favorites
- In the favorites tab you can research if we are connected with a school, using keywords and access schools we have had the most interactions with on Handshake.
- These are schools that have approved and subscribed to receiving our postings to share with their student base.
- Schools we have tried to start conversations with, have been denied access to or are pending access to.
- Permissions: In this section this shows which schools will allow us to post: jobs, internships, events, interview schedules, and work studies. Not all schools will allow you to do all of the above but there usually is some overlap.
- Location
- Community and Technical Colleges
- Ranking : Based on what type and best ranked schools on a national level
- Size : Population
- Region
This number is created based on our activity with positings, events, fairs, company profile completeness, a valid web address and platform etc.Our current Trust score is 91, and the scale is from 0-100. Must maintain a 80 or higher or we cannot message or interact with schools to increase recruitment numbers. If there is ever a time where the score goes under 80, you will have to contact the career services office at each school and they have to manually approve your access, very important to not go below 80. If you ever have gone below 80 and are needing to communicate with a school, they are allowed 5 business days to contact you, consider your request, and or allow or deny admission.
How to Post
Can only post and create postings as a registered user with the company, using the intern@ will eliminate not being a confirmed user or multiple accounts connected to Vote Smart.
A New Posting
Click post a job for your home dashboard or click jobs in the left hand navigation bar and click Create Job in the top right hand corner. Four Things to Complete in Posting: Basics, Details, Preferences and Schools
- Basics : This is what is included in this section:
- Where do applications get submitted?
- Job Title
- Company Division
- Job Type
- Employment Type and Duration
- If it is a work study job and if it is filling out the requirements
- Details: This is what is included in this section:
- Description
- How many students looking to be filled in this position
- Salary
- It is optional but I would highly recommend marking the job as unpaid and in the description illustrating that as well
- Location
- In here I would put Iowa but also allow for remote applications
- Job Preferences : This is what is included in this section:
- Graduation Date Range
- This does include putting year of interns you are looking for
- Minimum GPA
- Remember: 3.0
- Majors
- Majors don’t need to be really limited
- Applicant Packages
- This is where you input what documents are required
- REMINDER: References, Resume, Cover Letter
- Schools
- You can only post to schools you are approved to, so if you want to have postings go to all of the schools are approved to
- In this section you also add an apply start date and a post expiration date
- Once all are complete it allows a preview of what the posting will look like.
- Don't forget to click SAVE
Career Services staff from universities and colleges will comment on job postings. Interacting with their comments will also help with the Trust Score. You will receive notifications either in Handshake or in email notifications, then on the posting itself it will show comments that you can interact with. No Notifications = no comments. Use the add a comment text box and make sure to click the “Add Comment” to submit that comment
Things To Avoid On HandShake
These are the following things you need to avoid on HandShake so Vote Smart will remain in good standing with Universities and continue to have a good Trust Score:
- If the Internship Coordinator (or any account that is associated with the HandShake account) recieves an email saying an institutions has commented on the internship posting with questions, comments, etc. You have 3-5 business days to respond before it affects our Trust Score. Remember: the higher our Trust Score, the less direct involvement we have to have from institutions to post, and reach their students
- When creating and updating postings each semester, any institutions that will not support or will reject that we are an unpaid internship, delete the posting. Delete the intern posting for that semester and resubmit it next semester. If a university rejects the posting, it does not help our Trust Score if it is not interacted with or deleted. Universities can change their mind semester to semester, but we don't want it to affect our Trust Score in the meantime.
