Starting July 1, 2024, USC Annenberg will bid farewell to CareerLink, its longtime platform for career services, advising, events and online resources. The school is set to move to Handshake, a decision that will change how students navigate their career paths. Handshake connects students with job opportunities, internships and career resources, helping to ensure that students are well prepared for success in their future careers.
Handshake, a career management system, offers a user-friendly network that simplifies the job searching process. This shift will provide students as well as alumni with additional resources to navigate their career paths effectively.
The decision to switch from CareerLink to Handshake was made by the university over the past summer, going over bids from several companies.
“The university came together and this past summer we had a number of companies come to us with their versions of what their job board would be like, potentially for USC and handshake was the one who won the bid,” said Annenberg career advisor Zackery Luis Rigney. “Recently, we’ve been going through the implementation of transitioning from Simplicity, which was CareerLink, and connectSC into Handshake.”
Students’ CareerLink profiles have already migrated to Handshake, making the transition seamless for users.
“Honestly, because of how easy and simple it is to utilize, anyone can just hop on to look for jobs; even [just] narrowing down searches and seeing different things, [overall] accessibility, it is going to be a lot easier for people to find jobs, especially for students and recent grads,” Rigney said. “I see a lot of confidence in our ability to help students and alums who are looking for their next step because of how easy it will be to utilize.”
Handshake will allow students to narrow down positions that meet their needs, whether they are looking for internships, part-time or full-time jobs. Students can also find out about events on campus and get in contact with employers through posts on the platform.
Handshake is already being used by over 1,500 other colleges and institutions, according to their website.
The decision to pick Handshake was based on the needs communicated by students in their job search, as well as the concerns of employers who have had difficulty posting job openings on CareerLink, according to Rigney.
“The biggest hindrance for students is ‘A’, finding jobs and ‘B,’ for employers [is] posting jobs, and because it’s [Handshake] a way easier system to utilize, it becomes a lot more efficient for people to post things,” Rigney said.
Handshake was founded in Michigan by tech alumni in 2014, and since then has more than 15 million students and 900,000 employers who have joined the site.