Handshake Hellscape
You can’t log in to LinkedIn without seeing a post about how tough the job market is and has been for the past few months. People post about how they have applied to hundreds of jobs, unemployed for months, hearing nothing back from most jobs. When I had LinkedIn Premium I saw there were often 400 applications for mid-level roles requiring some kind of specialized experience. (Update as of August 2024 - I got a trial of LinkedIn Premium again and saw jobs with 3,000 and 5,000 applications. [skull emoji]).
When I started my graduate program, I saw they used a thing called Handshake to host information sessions and connect students with open job roles. Handshake has “15M+ students, 1,500+ universities and colleges in the US, and 900K+ employers” on its platform and claims to serve up personalized job recommendations.
Image of the Handshake website; orange background with image of a phone screen showing the Handshake app. Copy says “Personalized job recs. Get recommendations for relevant jobs, opportunities, and events based on your profile, interests, and what’s best for you.”
I thought it might be a way to avoid LinkedIn (which has become less helpful to actually find work) to find an opportunity that can make use of my graduate education. I signed up, input my education level (graduate student, business), the types of roles I am interested in (full time, marketing manager, marketing director) and waited to see.
I started getting numerous messages in my inbox and I was stoked. Finally! People were coming to me as a worthy candidate with education and eight years of experience. I couldn’t wait to see what roles I could be considered for.
I felt like a deflated balloon pretty immediately as I realized these recruiters messaging me were clearly batching and blasting with whatever role they had, especially internships. I replied back to many notifying them I am a graduate student (and in the workforce), asking if they had existing roles available, and only one replied. Two recruiters on the same days initially messaged me and followed up with the same canned response message for an internship.
I got a lot of messages for marketing and sales jobs (full time and internships), all but one of which were well below my experience level. The only one that wasn’t a huge step backwards specifically lists that they want people with an MBA already complete. At the time of the message my graduation wasn’t for another year. I also got some select other ones for which I am absolutely unqualified for:
Mechanical Summer Internship
Entry-Level Teacher
Elementary Teacher
Financial Advisor
Administrative Officer at a federal agency
Warehouse Area Manager
U.S. Navy General Officer
Assistant Branch Manager for a consumer loans company
Man, I know we have a shortage of teachers, but this also shakes my faith in the United States Navy.
Eventually, I went in and filled out my profile more, uploading my resume and inputting my specific experience in the system. I input my location and the two main cities with job opportunities within commuting distance, hoping that would help.
Verdict? Maybe. I got one message about “opportunities” at a company about 30 miles away, so within commuting distance. It’s promising.
But my bone to pick is not with overworked recruiters. It’s with the platform facilitating this. If a program is designed to help connect students and open jobs, it seems like building the functionality to narrow down relevant jobs and location would be key. Most of the jobs I have gotten messages for are states away from my own. I live in the NYC metro area, so it’s not like there is a shortage of jobs here. Why is someone messaging me about managing an Amazon warehouse in California? It’s because for some reason, the system served me up as a candidate for that role - the recruiter didn’t go hunting for people with a degree in English in New York. With Handshake being a San Francisco based company with 1,500 colleges as clients, I have to believe there are plenty of candidates in that region.
Handshake also seems to be making these weird judgments. It has sent me notifications for open jobs telling me I am a great fit for a sales job, a flight operations internship, a tax associate, a customer service associate role at a paint store, and a payroll internship.
I don’t mean to imply that any work is beneath me, but y’all, I have a bachelor’s degree, eight years of marketing experience, and half a graduate degree, and have inputted this information into the proper fields. Why am I getting notified about minimum wage retail jobs 196 miles away?
Worse still, they send me weekly emails with a roundup of jobs. These all are in the correct geographical area that I specified (progress) but this week’s jobs include a seasonal operations job for the US Open, an entry/junior level recruiting job, a sales job, and a grocery merchandiser, data analyst, and benefits advisor.
None of these are in marketing, which is once again the only thing I specified. Normally, I might suppose it’s selecting these jobs if there are no marketing roles, because it wants to serve up something. But, I know for a fact there are multiple marketing roles (even if internships) available on the platform within the last week, because I saw them.
Job hunting is hard enough for anyone, but specifically new grads, for which this system is designed. If Handshake wants to do a good service for these people primed and ready to enter the workforce (often under-resourced, at some of the lowest wages, taking on challenging work) it needs to improve its matchmaking systems.
But until that happens, I wonder how many more military branches will message me.