Handshake Premium Software

OIG currently uses Handshake Basic, a free service, to post jobs at colleges and universities that use this platform for Career Services. With Handshake’s Premium level of service, OIG will be able to realize many of the Executive Order’s goals by:

1. Maximizing the agency’s ability to recruit entry-level talent from a diverse, broad spectrum of potential applicants, across a variety of geographic regions, academic sources, and professional disciplines.

2. Casting a “broad net” to help ensure OIG’s student internship and fellowship programs have diverse pipelines to draw candidates from.

3. Build and strengthen outreach and recruitment partnerships with colleges and university that dedicated to working with underserved communities - many of the MSIs we contacted to establish partnerships told us they use the HandShake software platform to communicate with employers and students. This level of existing usage by staff and students at MSIs provides an instant reach to targeted student populations unavailable from any other company or program.

Only Handshake met the full agency requirements in support of EO 14035 as the only company and program that:

• Is used by significant population of student academic and career counselors at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).
• Provides targeted recruitment at all MSIs.
• Provides campus counselor support.
• Provides unlimited event and direct engagement flexibility and support at no extra charge so that HHS OIG can plan and execute recruitment events/engagement at any MSI as the need arises.

In recent years, OIG has struggled to hire young, entry-level talent into our mission-critical positions - employees under 30 has dropped to less than 7%, while nearly 75% of our workforce is eligible to retire in the next 5 years. USA Jobs, our main source of recruiting early talent for nearly 10 years, doesn’t offer opportunities to engage early talent, their career counselors or academic advisors in a sustainable way. HandShake Premium is a key component accomplishing this goal. Its Talent Engagement Suite offers valuable tools to help increase employer opportunities to network with early talent candidates while they are still in school - expanding our pool of candidates for entry level positions. It’s Ambassador Program Module offers opportunities for ongoing communication between OIG hiring managers and students - building and sustaining a diverse pipeline of qualified entry-level talent.

Due to its unique talent marketplace construction, Handshake is the only technology platform that will allow us to accomplish each of these goals.