Post Jobs and Internships

1. If you don’t have a Handshake account, signing up is free and easy. Step-by-step directions on how to make an account can be found on Handshake. It only takes a few minutes.

2. After signing up with Handshake, be sure to add University of Massachusetts Amherst as one of your schools so you can post jobs to our students and alumni: Directions for Adding a School.

UMass Amherst students are very savvy with Handshake and often go there as a first stop when looking for work opportunities, so this is definitely a great way to ensure the most fair and equitable distribution of your roles for our entire student population. 

The following fields are key fields to populate in your Handshake profile: 

Description 

Please keep in mind the information you include here is to inform a potential hire about your company and to provide a basic overview of what you do in terms anyone can understand. This language may need to be a little different than what is found on your website for a potential customer/client. Key information to highlight includes: 

1. What the company does and/or the company mission 

2. Who are your customers 

3. Briefly highlight what makes your organization unique 

4. Location(s) – for employers local to campus, include accessible by PVTA if relevant  

Social Media Links (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) 

Students love to research and social media is their go-to research tool. If your company utilizes any of these social media tools, populate the Handshake fields for LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter page links to guide students to your organization.

Logo and Banner 

If possible, upload both a logo (square) and banner (horizontal) to your profile, which will make ensure a professional appearance for your organization.

The more fields you complete when posting a job opportunity, the more well defined your posting will be, and the more likely you will attract well-qualified candidates. 

Here are some important fields to pay particular attention to when posting your roles on Handshake: 

Job Title  

• Use a title that accurately describes the job function  

• For internships and co-ops, add the word intern, internship, or co-op to your title. Additionally, it is helpful to include the season/year you are seeking to have the intern work (ex: Fall 2023 or Summer 2024)

Graduation Date Range 

• The common recommendation is to skip entering a graduation date range and use the “School Years” picker instead 

• There are many instances where employers accidentally choose conflicting graduation dates and school years and then by default no students match the position 

Selecting Majors in a Posting 

• Choose major groups or individual majors purposefully 

• Make sure the qualifications listed in your job description match the majors you have selected 

• Handshake utilizes an AI feature that suggests potential matching job opportunities to students. One of the key fields used in the AI matching is major. The more purposeful you are about selecting the best fitting majors for your postings, the more likely the students you are seeking will see your postings at the top of their search results.  

Students tell us they are looking for employers who are specifically looking for them. When students conduct a job search in Handshake they use filters to find jobs where there is a potential match. Many students use the filters for Job Type, School Year, and Major.  

Posting a job in Handshake takes about 5-10 minutes. This Handshake help article will walk you through all the steps and explain each of the fields: How to Post a Job