Handshake CEO Garrett Lord

Recruiting early talent with the CEO of Handshake, next on the RecTech Podcast.

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Hey again, great techies. Welcome to the only podcast that helps employers and recruiters connect with more candidates through technology-inspired conversations. Mastering recruitment technology is the key to hiring great talent. That's why this show exists. All right. Handshake is the leading network for early career talent. Their mission is to democratize access to opportunity by enabling students and alumni to establish meaningful relationships. No connections, no experience or luck required. Joining me now is their CEO and founder, Garett Lord. Hey, Garett, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Chris. Appreciate being here.

Definitely. Give us a quick history of Handshake. I think you guys are 10 years old now, and tell me more about how you, how you built it.

Yeah, so I mean, 10 years ago, Handshake really upended the, what I'd say is the status quo of campus recruiting. This kind of old system that employers leveraged of sitting at dozens of career fairs and hosting really expensive in-person events at a few schools nearby their corporate headquarters is, is, is really kind of fundamentally one of the few things that I think hasn't changed in recruiting with the advent of the internet. Students didn't get opportunities that they deserved, uh, at these career fairs, sitting in kind of a, a musty gymnasium with 1,000 other students walking up to, to physical tables. And, you know, you're You witness companies like match their logo with their tablecloth and kind of hope the right kids walk up to their booth, which for many companies, most students don't know what their brands are. And so what Handshake really was trying to do is dramatically change the way that students learned about careers. And a lot of this is actually happening on the internet today. Students are using Discord and they're using Slack groups, they're using Reddit, they're trying to learn about careers. So Handshake is a network of 15 million young professionals. Those are kids in college or community college, or after school that are engaging in this almost like career social network, learning from near peers, learning about what different career paths look like. And employers— we have 900,000 companies that use Handshake today— employers can digitally connect with those candidates, uh, at any school. And so we're trying to make the world a lot more meritocratic and fair by helping employers connect with the right students at any school in the country. And we have a wonderful set of 1,500 university partners today, so we pretty much power the vast majority of the higher education landscape in America. And so we're a 3-sided network and been at it 10 years now and, uh, really proud of a lot of success we had. Probably the primary metric that we care about is how many students do we help place into wonderful opportunities. And last year, uh, 48% of college students in America found their first job on Handshake. So we're far and away the largest early career network of job seekers, uh, and I feel like we're just getting started in this company journey.

How did you, how did you get so deep embedded, embedded into the, you know, the university experience here? Give me, like, take me back towards that time when you were first getting going and, and when did, when was the kind of the, the inflection point there for you guys? Yeah.

So if you think about our marketplace, right, universities on one side, students on the other, and employers on the other, they all share a very common goal, which is, you know, helping find great candidates or helping students find great opportunities. And so the reason that so many universities launched Handshake was because of this really focus on higher education of helping propel students into careers. And universities really realized that they struggled with technology and struggled with scale to reach students in a personalized way. And so I think that the really explosive moment, or I think to your question, the tipping point in our network was really when we can prove that universities could help their students have better outcomes by buying Handshake. And we were really proud of this stat. The average university— and this is a pretty early stat in our network's history— the stat was that the average university would see 2 to 3 times more employers recruiting at their school, which is huge. I mean, 200 to 300% increase. And they would see on average, on average, I believe in the early days they were doubling their students' engagement. So that's number of profiles and number of active job seekers. And when we were able to quantify the impact for universities, universities fled to Handshake en masse because this pressure on higher education of quantifying the value of a degree is really important for them. And on, and, and the, the other kind of subtle aspect of this as well is a lot of employers, we were able to dramatically improve their workflow and time saving, time savings because they didn't have to log into multiple systems. So students like the product more, employers like the product more, and there's a lot of word of mouth, word of mouth around campus that would That would really propel a university to switch.

Yeah. So employers can go on to like a— I think this is how it works. Correct me if I'm wrong, but employers can go on to some universities' career site and post a job, and it's all basically powered by your network.

Is that correct? Yes. We turn— historically, the way the world worked is that each university had its own separate system. And so that led to a lot of hours applied at connecting to each individual university. And today, Handshake now powers 94% of the top 500 universities in the country. And so an employer is able to, with a few clicks, really gain access to the next generation of their workforce.

Yeah, that was a smart move by you guys doing that. I mean, it really must have catapulted your business once you've, you know, got embedded like that, right?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. It's an— so today for the job seeker, for the student, it's an app-first experience. Is that correct?

Correct. Most students, about 75% of college students in America have access to Handshake. And the vast majority of college students in America are on Handshake, meaning they have the app downloaded on their phone and are searching for jobs, getting messages, engaging with our feed, which is short-form video content around from other students and employers and universities.

What's an example of that video I would see? Like, give me some examples of what students are posting on there.

Totally. So me, like, like, great, good example is, I think the most fun one is TikTok. Like, TikTok is actually creating videos around what does a day in the life look like? What does it mean to be a product manager at TikTok? Should I work in machine learning or should I work in front-end web development? Like, there's actually young employees at the company speaking about what these experiences look like. And just making this process for students, which is I mean, if you zoom back to when you were like a sophomore or junior in college, like, there's just so much, there's so much, there's such, so much kind of mystery around what these different career paths look like. So that's an example from TikTok, or maybe have like L'Oréal or Teach for America producing content around what their company culture is like, what students do inside that company, how they get promoted, what it's like being a woman in the workplace over there. So that there's, there's, there's dozens of examples. You can think about it a lot like creators at the company who are really passionate about sharing their story, um, engaging with prospective candidates.

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You got some, uh, recent product updates to announce, or?

Yeah, the, I think the main product announcement that I'm most excited about is the short-form video content created by students, grads, career influencers, universities, interns, and recruiters on the platform. It really provides powerful advice and I think a lot of inspiration for college students. And in a way that, that is way more like real and compelling than just a job description. And what makes Handshake unique in this process is this is where all the students are searching for jobs. This is where all the events are. This is where all the info sessions and fairs are. And so it's very much an integrated experience.

Yeah. Can students talk to each other too as well? Or—

Yeah, there's tons of students that are reaching out for advice and reaching out to alumni and communicating to other students in the Society of Women Engineering across campuses. There's many examples of students trying to learn from one another and mimic one another.

Sounds like a LinkedIn for students almost. Is that the experience-wise? I mean—

I think that'd be a very fair comparison.

Gotcha. Okay. So what, as far as employers go, Garett, what products and services do you sell to them beyond job listings, for example?

So for companies, and the vast majority of companies hiring from college in America today are on Handshake. So, you know, given the almost a million companies using the product, like if you're recruiting from college, most likely you already have an account, and I'm sure many of your fans are, are probably already Handshake users or have people on their team that are using it. There's a free product and a paid product. The free product allows you to post jobs, allows you to register for events for free. We never want to limit access to the network, and we want to be able to allow employers to create access. I mean, that was so much of my story. I went to a school that was in the middle of nowhere, and I'm really passionate about improving even small businesses' ability to connect with any student in the country. And then companies can pay, and the way they pay for the product is, is They can proactively reach out to candidates. I think that's the main distinction is the ability to proactively target and identify the right candidates and engage with those candidates in a magnitude of ways. They could invite them to an event. For example, like there's a student named— maybe to bring it to life with like a student story of what they would pay for. There's a student named Wes who is at Emory Riddle University studying aerospace engineering, and a company like Raytheon which is a paid customer of ours, actually reached out based on his profile and actually kind of saw that he was an aerospace engineer and invited him to an event. And an event like a digital event, not actually a physical event based on his GPA and based on his prior internships and based on his coursework. He came to the event and then he had a great, he did a great job at the event and then they actually flew him out to an interview on site and then hired him. And that would be an example of reaching out to a candidate at scale based on their unique attributes on their profile, that's a, that's a part of the paid offering.

Interesting. Let me ask you about a job seeker's point of view for a second. You know, to me, there's kind of a shift happening in the, in the labor market here in terms of how people view jobs in terms of their life and things like that. There was a stat I just saw where 33% of CEOs are really worried about that, that whole mindset of the job seeker of today in terms of how they view work-life balance, things like that. What are you hearing from students around how they view the workplace here in terms of how they— that work-life balance, you know, question? Yeah.

Well, I think what's— maybe I'd love to share like fun things that might be counter counterintuitive compared to the mainstream narrative, right? Which is, you know, some might think that students are only interested in working remotely. Well, the reality is when we look at— we have a fantastic data asset called the Handshake Network Trends and encourage folks to find that on our website. But students actually are interested in building a community and making friends and finding a sense of purpose in the workplace. And so actually students, they don't want to come in 5 days a week, but many students would say they would love to come in 1 or 2 days a week. So that might be like super countercultural to like this narrative that Gen Z only wants to work remotely. In regards to the work-life balance, I think the attribute I'd love to hit on is, is the focus on like doing something that matters or a mission that matters in an environment that they're culturally aligned to. That is really important to college students. Finding a company that they can make a difference at and they feel like their work is impactful to the world is one of the primary attributes that this next generation cares about in the workplace. And I think maybe a takeaway for our employers is showcasing what your ERGs are doing, showcasing what you're doing in terms of your mission and your impact, showcasing how much your leadership team cares about the work that they're doing is, is, is really important. And the way that that comes across, authenticity matters a lot. So like, people want to hear from young employees at a company around what their experience has been. That's a lot more helpful than just like high-level corporate maybe brand speak. So actually showcasing, like, exemplary employees early in their career and why they chose to work there and how their work matters. Like, the key point I'm trying to make here is, like, near peers. Like, students want to understand what near peers are doing. They find that, not to make fun, but, you know, older executives at the company are less relatable than folks that are maybe just a couple years ahead of them. So those are some takeaways from our side, Chris.

No, it's good advice for employers out there if they're listening. You know, it's, you really have to tell stories today about, you know, what it's like to work at your company and do that by using your own employees, you know.

And to bring that to life, like, like a trend that I think will become very mainstream over time, and we have some of the most innovative companies, large companies in the world doing, is actually leveraging their team as like their talent acquisition army. And so what that actually means is getting young employees at the company To participate in engaging with these students in credible and authentic ways. And the primary way that they're doing that is actually by leveraging like creators at their company to create content, to moderate conversations, to lead challenges like Ask Me Anythings, where a student could come in and ask them anything in a comment on the feed. And then the young employee is responding back to that student around, well, here's how I did it, and here's what I wish I would have known, and here's how I would have changed my collegiate experience to match this opportunity. That is hugely popular. And it is, it, I think it fits a lot of the, I mean, if even if you're not in college, I think it very much fits your understanding of how to engage on social media platforms.

Mm-hmm.

That those same concepts can be applied directly to the career path and career navigation experience. So I think for all the recruiters out there, what I would really encourage folks to think about is I think the role of a recruiter is changing over time, uh, less around individual sourcing and sending messages and more about being a content creator and being a brand builder and creating forms that are that feel authentic in, in, in the right environment. And I think we'll talk about probably AI is probably a big buzzword later in the podcast, but we'll talk about what we're doing there and in our, in our shift to try to make this more tangible for employers.

Well, that's a good segue. That was my next question, Garrett. So talk about AI and recruiting and the recruiting landscape there. What are you guys doing and how do you think about this? And where's it going?

Yeah.

Why don't I kind of talk about 2 very different use cases? One is the student side, and then one is the recruiter side. And I think they'll merge, they'll merge a little bit. But so we're building a career copilot for students. It's, if you're a college student in America, you're leveraging these large language model technologies. Most students are using ChatGPT in so many ways.

It is It—

I think the key point I love to make is like this idea that this is, this is just like a news article or kind of fad with college students. Like, students are logging into ChatGPT multiple times per day. They're, they're, they're using it for everything. They're using it to write papers. They're using it for homework help. They're using it to plan out their curriculum. This is a, like, a standard part of, like, every single student's day in America. And the overall take rate and attachment rate for students is incredible. And so this isn't an experience that students need to learn how to use. They're used to engaging with these conversational bots. And we've built the best conversational bot for career search on the internet. We're leveraging— we have an incredible data team, a lot of folks that have spent in this space for a long period of time that brings together what I like to describe as like A lot of students think about having like a helpful uncle, like an uncle that's helped them with the resume and engaging in a mock interview and thinking about their company search. Like, a lot of students don't have that helpful uncle. Like, a lot of students don't have the socioeconomic background to have a family member that can help them through this process. Our Career Copilot is really leveraging, like, kind of eliminating that advantage. We think our Copilot can compare to a very talented uncle. Helping you through any question you have around career path navigation, salary negotiation, building a resume, building a cover letter, identifying the right jobs, talking about what it means to work at this company in a way that, that, that actually knows you. The bot's actually personalized to your background and your interests and what you've done on Handshake in the past. And it only gets smarter over time as more and more students use it. So really excited about the Career Copilot. It's been one of the most fantastic launches in Handshake history. And then just to remind folks, this is like, this is not just a launch. It's, it's a, it's a normal part of navigating the internet for these college students.

Yeah. It's gonna be, you know, part of your everyday, you know, totally job search. Yeah.

And then on the company side, like, all the standard things that you might think you'd leverage AI to do, we have on a roadmap or have built, like, automating messages to students based in, in a personalized way that saves recruiter time. The key theme here is like recruiter efficiency, recruiter time. And I, if I, if I zoom out from just scheduling and messages and automatically finding out the right candidates to reach out to, like, I think a lot of this job of like sourcing will very much become automated away through leveraging, especially given the innovation in AI, like sourcing, candidate selection, all that, that far and away will become automated. And I think the role of a recruiter will evolve to be curating authentic experiences with cohorts of students or cohorts of professionals that you find interesting and you want to build a competitive advantage to. And I think companies that are late to that movement, we're already seeing like many companies have already automated away a lot of what they're doing from a sourcing perspective and are spending like 80-90% of their time creating authentic experiences to actually improve conversion rate of candidates or identify early identification programs with underrepresented groups or computer science majors managers, these hard to hire roles. A lot of companies are putting a lot of time into, into kind of building brand in an authentic way. And that time has come from sourcing as, yeah, come from sourcing.

Yeah, definitely. How big is Handshake today? How many employees do you have?

We're like 600, 650 people.

Well, okay. And what's a typical day in the life like for you as the CEO of an early career talent platform?

Well, I work with an incredible team of really passionate people, um, and that are passionate and, and good at so many different things. So my team has spent mostly engaging with my team on, um, all kinds of things related to company, company building, like product developments, the overall customer component, both on the university and employer side, and trying to make sure that our customers are happy and we're meeting their needs and that we're growing that audience over time. Spent a lot of time with external companies as well, speaking to CHROs, VP of Talent Acquisition, CEOs of small, medium, and large businesses. Spent a lot of time recruiting as well. I know, I think, yeah, always be recruiting is a key motto for a lot of growth stage leaders. We're always trying to fill key roles and grow the team in a strategic way. And I spend a good amount of time as well, like with individual product teams talking about their roadmaps and what we're building across this 3-sided marketplace. I'm really, I'm really passionate about the intersection of how do we make universities, employers, and students successful all on one common platform.

Yeah. How did you handle the whole pandemic thing? I know a lot of, I know Indeed laid off, ZipRecruiter laid off. Did you guys struggle there at all? What was that like for you guys?

Yeah, I mean, we were, greatly impacted by the overall talent acquisition market and had to do a layoff as well, which is extremely unfortunate. And it's just we, we had so many talented people that I never would have wanted to say goodbye to that we had to say goodbye to because of the rapid revenue deceleration.

Yep. What and how has the market been last year or so? It seems to be just kind of flat right now for many, you know, job marketplaces and stuff. But what's your take?

We're growing. I mean, we're still super underpenetrated. Like we have, there's so much headroom in our core market and there's so much inefficiency. And I think we've been, we are the category leader far and away in this category and have been able to grow not quite at the clip that we did in 2019 and 2020, but are still growing in a, we're also a much more mature business.

Yeah.

So growing in So the more mature you are, that you're still growing, but just not quite at the clip where you're doubling revenue every single year like we used to do in the past. Yeah.

And have you started hiring again or what's your—

Oh yeah, we probably have 30 to 50 roles open at Handshake right now and are hiring in a, in a, in a way. We'd love you to apply if you're interested in, in, you like what you're hearing on this podcast, please, please visit our website, joinhandshake.com, and we'd love to Love to talk with you.

Definitely. And yeah, that's great. Well, I guess one last question there on that. How do you, how does a job seeker impress you, Garrett, as far as getting a job at Handshake?

Good question.

Let me think about that for a second. I mean, maybe I'd talk about something that I've been thinking about a lot as we've been interviewing and hiring executives and senior talent is I think it takes a while to, I think it takes a while at a company to, I guess the core point I'm mentioning here is I've seen a lot of job hoppers, people that do 1 year, 2 years, 2 years, 2 years, 18 months, 30 months. And when I notice, or at least what I see in our internal team is it takes a while to do really great work. I mean, you can do great work, but you don't see the matrix and really put up big points. If you spend a year at a company and then jump to another company, it's like you never, you never really made that big of an impact on the business or the team. I mean, we valued your contributions. We have, we're very thankful for all the folks that have been with us for short and long stints. But what I really look for is like a pattern of digging in and creating impact. And I think to create true impact and to really move the needle, on the strategic priorities of the business takes a while.

Yeah.

And you can do that as a young employee. You can do that as a senior employee. Like everyone makes an impact to the business. But I think that all too often folks are a bit too transactional in their thinking. Perhaps, perhaps it's on the company, perhaps it's on them, like where they don't find the right fit. But when you do find the right fit, I'd encourage more folks to like every part of a career is like, like a season and some seasons aren't great and some seasons are great. And like, I think all too often people hit just a few bumps in their road and it's a tough season. Maybe it's a little rainy spring and they, and they go jump to the next company. And what I value in a lot of the candidates that I speak with is that grit, that resilience, and watching people grow through their chapters because generally people get promoted through various seasons in a business. And when somebody's able to come in and talk, tell great stories around the different seasons they've been through and the impact they've made, That's really powerful.

Yeah, that's great advice, Garrett. I really appreciate that. And that's a, that's a good way to think about it, I think, as well. So, well, again, Garrett Lord, CEO of Handshake, appreciate your time today. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you, Chris. Have a wonderful day.

That will do for this episode of the RecTech Podcast. Be sure to follow us on the socials, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn via the @RecTechMedia handle. See every video and blog we publish. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Remember, always be recruiting, just like Garrett said.

Another episode of RecTech is in the books. Follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisRussell or visit RecTechMedia.com where you can find the audio and links for this show on our blog. RecTech Media helps keep employers and recruiters up to date through our podcasts, webinars, and articles, so be sure to check out our other sites, Recruiting Headlines and HR Podcasters, to stay on top of recruiting industry trends. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you soon on the next episode of RecTech, the recruiting technology podcast.

Thank you.