Switching

From Handshake to Career Forge

Handshake is a national network: employers post once to many schools, students hold accounts of their own, and each school configures its corner of a shared system.

The short answer

Move if your career center wants its employers, approval rules and data under its own control and runs its own fairs. Stay if your students' postings come mostly from Handshake's national network and your office has little employer-relations capacity.

What changes

Each career center gets its own placeIn Handshake a campus is one school instance; career centers added inside it share employers, jobs, students and contacts, and Stripe payments cannot be split per center. In Career Forge each center runs its own portal, with its own employers, approvals, topics, events and invoices, rolling up to institution-level branding, picklists, staff and sign-on.Handshake Help: Multiple career centers, workflow considerations

Your employers become a list you ownOn Handshake, an employer posts once to many schools and the network supplies much of the job board. In Career Forge an employer has one account across every career center on the platform and posts to one center or several, but the employers on your board are the ones you work with and approve. The network is newer and smaller than Handshake's.Handshake: Career centers

Student records are the institution'sHandshake's help center says students retain ownership of the data they upload to Handshake. In Career Forge students sign in through the university's identity provider and the records belong to the institution.Handshake Help: Data ownership in Handshake

Fair pricing is built into the registrationBoth systems invoice a fair registration and take card payment through Stripe. Career Forge adds packages, add-ons and pricing by organization type to the registration itself, with a financial overview per event, and takes TouchNet and checks as well.Handshake Help: How to pay for a career fair registration

Check-in moves to an iPad kiosk that prints badgesBoth systems check students in at the door and print name tags; Handshake's kiosk runs in a browser with a configured printer and drops to offline mode on a bad connection. Career Forge's is an iPad app with a Brother label printer that also checks recruiters in; check-ins export, including to Handshake's format if a partner still needs it.Handshake Help: An overview of check-in kiosks

History can come with youHandshake's Importer loads students, employer contacts, historical appointments, events and notes from a previous system, so the same records exist there as CSV exports. Tell us which of them you need in Career Forge and we will say what loads.Handshake Help: Importer, getting started

Fewer postings, all of them yoursPosting on Handshake is free across the network, so the board is large. A Career Forge board holds what your employers post and your staff approve. Expect fewer listings and more that fit; employer relations does the work the network did.Handshake: Career centers

What moves over

What	How
Students	Imported from a roster with the Candidate Data Import, with majors, school years and degree levels mapped to your picklists. Single sign-on means nobody gets a new password.
Employers and recruiters	Loaded from your list, so the employers you work with are in place before the first event opens.
Events	Set up fresh in Career Forge. An event is a few screens, and a copied event carries its questions and options to the next one.
Staff, coaches and topics	Created in the staff portal during setup, with each coach's topics, availability and calendar sync.
History	Past appointments, postings and registrations are not imported by default. Tell us what you need to keep, and we will say what can be loaded and what should stay as an export.

How a move runs, and the first term

When Handshake is the right choice to keep

Handshake's value is the network. If your students' job supply comes mostly from employers your office has no relationship with, keep it.

Students are found by employers nationally, not only the ones you bring to campus
Postings from about a million employers, by Handshake's own count
Student mobile apps on iOS and Android

Career Forge vs Handshake, side by side

Questions people ask

Students, imported from a roster and signing in through the university's identity provider; your employer list, loaded before the first event; staff, coaches and topics, set up in the staff portal. Events are created fresh. History such as past appointments and notes exports from Handshake as CSV; tell us what you need to keep.

A term, in most cases. Implementation runs about three to four months from kickoff to go-live for a typical career center, with data, configuration, training and testing overlapping. Plan the move back from the first event you want on the new system.

No. Students sign in with the university's own identity provider, so there is no new password and no account to claim.