Career Services offers Jobs4Hawks through Handshake

University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Career Services switched from utilizing Purple Briefcase to a new job search platform – Handshake, which is said to have an increasingly immense community for college students and alumni nationwide.

Handshake, founded in 2014 by three ex-Michigan Tech students – Garrett Lord, Scott Ringwelski and Ben Christensen – has grown exponentially in popularity among 14 million students and alumni, over 800 universities (including over 120 institutions for minorities), Fortune 500 companies, retail companies, nonprofit organizations, and other types of businesses.

“We believe that Handshake is popular with students, university partners and employers because we have created a community that is laser-focused on meeting the needs of university career centers, students looking for meaningful internships and jobs, and employers looking to hire a diverse and inclusive early talent workforce,” said Priti Khare, Handshake’s director of communications and public relations. “Handshake is democratizing opportunity and ensuring college students have the support they need to find a great job and kick-off a meaningful career regardless of where they go to school, what they choose as a major, and who they know.”

Chuck Crocker, director of Career Services, says Jobs4Hawks is UHCL’s career management system, while Handshake serves as a middleman. With Jobs4Hawks, students and alumni can upload their resumes and find jobs.

Jobs4Hawks includes a database of employers, which grants Career Services the ability to directly connect with specific employers. In addition, interviews with employers visiting either UHCL or UHCL-Pearland can be easily arranged.

Handshake, Crocker said, “serves a lot of different infrastructural purposes,” by enabling students to easily send their resumes to employers, and those employers to offer internships or jobs. However, students do have the option to hide whatever information they do not want to be disclosed to the public.

“We want to be more user-friendly for both the employer and the student,” Crocker said. “We want to be able to have software that makes it seamless, more effective, and faster to get students connected with employers. It enables us to help students better and send word out to employers at a faster rate.”

Crocker said the registration systems Career Services utilized in the past were not as user-friendly nor as automatic as Handshake has been so far. He also said Handshake is likely to monopolize the university market.

Other universities who use the Handshake platform include University of Texas, Texas State University, Rice University, St. Thomas University, and Stephen F. Austin State University. Then, there are ones who will begin using Handshake by the next year, such as the University of Houston.

Career Services wants to make as many job opportunities available to as many students as possible. However, Crocker acknowledges there is a demand for those specializing in liberal arts, as well as the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields.

Career Services aims to do their best in filling the empty spaces in today’s supply-and-demand that calls for more STEM specialists. Crocker said they are also seeking to register more employers, so they can have more users on the “demand side.”

Through Jobs4Hawks, Career Services endeavors to include professional, temporary and part-time job opportunities, along with internships. Although mostly graduate and senior students use Jobs4Hawks, a few freshmen and sophomore students have used Career Services’ platforms to find jobs.

Students can access Jobs4Hawks through UHCL’s Career Services page by using their campus login. Once inside, students will need to provide data including past work experiences, education, interests, specialties and volunteer work history.

However, if trying to sign in for the first time, students may have to request an SSO (Single Sign-On) setup before accessing a page in which they must provide said data. Once logged in, students can add more information, like their GPA and education history, as well as find others with whom to connect.

Given Jobs4Hawks’ recent switch to Handshake, Career Services does not currently hold a lot of information. Yet, they do know there is a community on Handshake and will attempt to bring UHCL employers and alumni into that community.

Currently, there are no on-campus opportunities listed on Jobs4Hawks, but Crocker said this issue is already being addressed. Luis Arturo Perez, student ambassador of the Office of Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, said there generally are on-campus jobs available. In fact, UHCL recently had an on-campus job fair, specifically for student workers.

“A lot of the offices, especially from Student Services, were looking for entirely new people,” Perez said.

As far as on-campus jobs are concerned, Perez said offices are usually flexible, understanding that studies are more important than work. This means that students can request time off as needed, and they are given clemency for being late because of classes’ running late or course schedule conflicts. On the other hand, on-campus employees cannot work more than 20 hours per week. Career Services aims to have on-campus job opportunities available on Jobs4Hawks within the next few days.

Crocker described Jobs4Hawks as, “an awesome system with which we can communicate to students and employers, and we don’t need to have to use more than one system.”

Additionally, Crocker hopes that through this new platform, more students who either are or have graduated will get the help needed to find the job or start the career they desire.

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