Over the last year, we saw the number of multi-school fairs hosted on Handshake double. Institutions large and small shared that pooling resources helped them attract more employers and better serve students in niche majors. Hear more from your peers about the value of hosting a multi-school fair here.
Having helped facilitate countless multi-school virtual fairs this past year, Handshake’s relationship managers shared the following tips:
1. Get creative with the focus of your fair
Multi-school fairs work great for students of all majors and backgrounds. That said, joining forces with other institutions means you can attract more niche employers that are suited for students in a unique field.
Over the last year, we’ve seen multi-school fairs targeting students interested in:
- Opportunities that require fluency in French
- Employers in government, library, archive, and museum fields
- Careers in boutique consulting
- Jobs in marketing, PR, and advertising
- And more!
Since virtual fairs on Handshake are free for our partners to use, we encourage you to consider hosting multiple niche multi-school fairs to offer your students a more tailored experience.
2. Meet with your co-hosts regularly
Coordinating a fair across multiple teams can be challenging. The most successful multi-school fairs hosted over the last year saw participating institutions meeting regularly. Important topics to stay on top of include:
- Marketing the fair to students
- Engaging each school’s employer network
- Day-of logistics and responsibilities
After the fair is over, we recommend meeting again to discuss how the event went. This can help you identify best practices for your next fair.
3. Invite institutions that don’t partner with Handshake to your multi-school virtual fair
An institution doesn’t have to partner with Handshake to participate in your multi-school virtual fair. This help article describes how you can make your fair invite only and then share it with your co-host schools.
4. Make sure each co-host promotes their school-specific link
Each co-host school will see a “Student Preview Link” on the fair page in Handshake. This link is unique per school—the URL starts with your school domain (e.g. “jvu.joinhandshake.com”). Make sure you use your school’s unique link—it’ll lead your students to your unique login page. This ensures your students can easily log into Handshake and register.
NOTE: If you’re sharing the fair link with a non-partner school, update the fair link so that it begins with “app.joinhandshake.com”. This leads to Handshake’s generic login page where non-partner students can sign up for an account and register for the fair.
5. Host a joint support room
This summer, Handshake will allow schools to add a button to the fair page to promote support rooms for students and employers.
When hosting a multi-school virtual fair, we recommend joining forces and offering one support room for students and one for employers. We recommend you open your support rooms an hour before the fair. Historically, this is when schools have seen the most activity.
Interested in partnering on a multi-school virtual fair?
Handshake is compiling a directory of institutions seeking partners to host a multi-school fair. Reach out to your relationship manager for more information. You can learn about product updates coming this summer that will make hosting a multi-school fair even easier here.