Alex Kinsman ’21, our Employer Relations Career Intern, recently attended Target’s “Investing in You!” series event through Handshake that focused on building your brand and standing out using Handshake. Here are some tips and takeaways to help you get ready to stand out at our Feb 11 Job & Internship Fair!
Companies, like Target, are on Handshake looking for college students – like you! – and building your Handshake profile pushes you to the top of the employer searches and helps highlight jobs and internships that are specific to your interests and align with your profile so you don’t miss out on some great opportunities you might not see.
There are 7.4 million students on Handshake so here’s some are some tips from Alex on ways to stand out:
To get started – upload your resume! Save time and let Handshake help you populate some of the sections below directly from your resume.
Profile basics: a snapshot of yourself
- Have a professional photograph (perhaps use your LinkedIn headshot to keep your online brand consistent)
- Make sure expected graduation date is reflected in your handshake profile
- Upload your resume and keep it up to date
- Only 27% of people have updated their location preferences – by updating this, you will further stand out when recruiters are searching for potential candidates
My Journey: personalized area of your profile
- This area allows the most freedom for you to market yourself – so use it.
- The journey section should be written in the same language that a resume or essay are written in.
- Use this section to articulate to hiring managers what is important to you in a career
- Be specific enough to show roles that you find interesting but not too specific to risk opportunities that you might be interested in not populating
Coursework:
- All courses are not required
- Add courses that are relevant to the career you would like to go into
Skills:
- Do not add skills that you cannot support
- Be able to back up the skills in an interview setting – so if “leadership” is a skill make sure you have examples or stories to showcase this in an interview.
Jobs Section: The jobs that populate on the Jobs section are related to keywords in your profile.
- If the jobs that pull up towards the top do not interest you then maybe change some aspects of your profile
- If you do not know what you want to do then this is a good way for you to be exposed to a job that you were not aware of
- If a job has “apply externally” make sure to follow through to all the steps on the employer’s website