Megan Riksen:

Hello and welcome to the Work Wike a Laker podcast. I'm Megan Riksen, and today I am joined by Grace Joaquin. And Grace, our question to kick things off today because we're talking about both Handshake and LinkedIn, are, do you have any success stories related to either of those platforms?

Grace Joaquin:

So, <laugh> truthfully, for myself, not really only because I did not have either of those accounts until I got this job and since I've had this job, I have not been looking for a new job, so -

Megan Riksen:

Good. Stick with us.

Grace Joaquin:

<Laugh>. I have not been in the job search process. Linkedin I did not, I knew roughly about, but honestly I had the misguided notion that it was like Facebook for business people. Which, you know, I think I can see why I had that idea, but it definitely is so much more than that. And I definitely should have had one, but I didn't until I got the job I had now at Grant Valley. And then Handshake is definitely more of a tool for college students and alumni so I didn't know it and it was even, it wasn't even around until 2018, I think at Grand Valley. So anyway, I did not have either until I got this job. So I don't have a personal story, however, my husband does, and if any of our listeners listened to our episode on negotiation last season, he talked a little bit about this, but basically my husband Victor was a staffing recruiter and he had a LinkedIn but didn't use it. So he had like a picture up but didn't have any connections. He didn't have a resume on there, really didn't have barely any information on there, and he didn't use it. Then he decided, well, you know what, I'll just like connect with Grace 'cause this is part of her job. And he connected with a few other people and he uploaded a resume. And seriously, within a month he had a recruiter, he had multiple recruiters talking to him, but one specifically that he then ended up taking a job offer through that. And he, that's where he is working now and he loves it - at The Right Place. So within a month of having a LinkedIn account, he got a really great job opportunity <laugh>. So that's our success.

Megan Riksen:

That's a great endorsement there for LinkedIn, <laugh>.

Grace Joaquin:

So, yeah. Not me personally, but it is very personal to me because that's my husband. How about you Megan?

Megan Riksen:

Yeah, I would say the success I've seen with LinkedIn is kind of similar to you. It's not for myself necessarily. Right. Because I'm not on the job hunt either. We love the Career Center <laugh>. But back when I was doing career advising for our office I often would reach out to alums after I had had a conversation with a student in my office who maybe had a more niche idea of what they wanted to do. And it would just would've been so helpful to talk to an alum who was doing that. So yeah, I can think of a few examples where I reached out to someone kind of on the student's behalf, but also just good for myself to have that connection in that, you know, particular niche area. They write back and then, you know, you can kind of exchange emails and go from there to kind of connect the student and stay connected in that way.

Grace Joaquin:

Feels like informational interviews too I think people use them.

Megan Riksen:

Exactly.

Grace Joaquin:

Or for us, for our podcast, we've had guests that way. We found guests that way, so.

Megan Riksen:

Right, right. Which is kind of great 'cause it really, it's a, it's a really useful tool to find alums.

Grace Joaquin:

Totally. That's, that's how I, that's my favorite part of it, to be honest.

Megan Riksen:

That's kind of the best part. So yeah, so I know we just both gave LinkedIn examples, <laugh>, but we also think Handshake is pretty great and today we just, we want to go a little in depth, kind of a Handshake versus LinkedIn situation. They both have some unique characteristics and then they also have a ton of overlap. So I think it can be really confusing as a student to say like, do I need one? Do I need the other, do I need both? Would you agree that every student should have both have gone into their Handshake account and also have created a LinkedIn account?

Grace Joaquin:

I do.

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. Me too. <Laugh> <laugh>, sorry, students who thought you could get away with only one. But yeah, I think it's pretty important to have both. Because LinkedIn really is where you're starting to build your professional network and while it can feel like, I don't wanna just be networking online, it really is a tool that when you meet someone in person, you then can connect with them on LinkedIn and that's a great way to stay connected. So you're starting to build connections and you can do this as a freshman, right? Like you can create your LinkedIn profile and you will be able to start connecting with fellow classmates, with people you met in the career center with your academic advisor, with your faculty. So you can already kind of start to build that network. That's I think, typically what people use LinkedIn for. It does have other features which we'll talk about. And then Handshake, you wanna think of kind of as a Grand Valley tool. Yes, there, you know, probably what you mostly know about it is that there's, you know, job and internship postings, but it really is a great tool to kind of manage your, you know, career journey, I guess, for lack of a better word, while you're at Grand Valley or, and even right after you graduate, because that's where we post our events. You can register for events, that's where the recruiters who are coming to campus are gonna be, you can connect with them in that way. We'll go into more details. I feel like I'm kind of spilling all the beans right now, <laugh>, but hopefully that gives like a little bit of an overview of kind of why both of these tools are going to be helpful for you.

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. And I can give a brief description of like Handshakes, so

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. Get in there a little bit. Yeah.

Grace Joaquin:

Just to summarize what it is, Handshake is an online job board for college students and recent grads. You should be either. If you wanna connect to a school, you have to be either a current student or an alumni. So for Grand Valley people, if you're an alumni, that also works. If you're a current student, what's nice is you can just use your logins, your Grand Valley logins to get in so you don't have to create a whole new password and all of that. If you're an alumni, we have directions on the career center website, gvsu.edu/careers to, to find out how to create an account or you can connect with us at the career center and we'll, we'll help you through that. But it's super easy to get in because of that and then you can just create a profile and go from there. And as Megan said, there's a lot of tools with it and we'll get even more in depth. But that's kind of just the broad summary.

Megan Riksen:

For sure. And then LinkedIn also has that job board feature as we mentioned. But it's one of its many features. Linkedin is used by professionals, students, people globally. So this is not connected to one particular university or institution. And you know, because it's global, there's a lot more people on there, a lot more people to connect with. But as you'll see, you might wanna stick with the job board feature on Handshake. Right.

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. There's reasons you would use one over the other.

Megan Riksen:

Right.

Grace Joaquin:

So with Handshake, the users are more often college students or like recent grads. Also higher education staff like us. We are on there. And then the professionals who are on there are going to more often be recruiters. So for example, if you are in the accounting field, you're not going to find a lot of accountants who are on Handshakes. But you might find recruiters who are looking to hire for accounting positions on Handshake. So that's one of - whereas LinkedIn is going to have both. Not to steal your thunder Megan -

Megan Riksen:

No, no, no. Steal it.

Grace Joaquin:

And so what recruiters do on Handshake is they will post their positions to find talent. So that's where, and often because it's related to college or they're connected to colleges, the positions on there are more often going to be entry level, internships, things that college students and recent grads are going to be looking for. So I feel like you might have a better chance of finding one that's going to be a fit for your needs at this point than perhaps on LinkedIn.

Megan Riksen:

And there are, sorry to cut you off, but there are also some cool features in terms of now I'm blanking on what the lists are called, where we curate the employer lists.

Grace Joaquin:

Spotlight. Collect, collection, employer collections I think is what -

Megan Riksen:

Sure, sure. <Laugh>

Grace Joaquin:

Signal Boosting. It has a few names, I think <laugh>.

Megan Riksen:

Okay. Yeah. Excuse us. Not remembering what that exactly is called, but when you log into Handshake you can actually, we as a career center can spotlight employers. So for example, around Career Fair Time will spotlight the employers who are coming to career fairs. So, you know that these are recruiters who are actively searching at Grand Valley. I think that is a huge plus for Handshake.

Grace Joaquin:

Totally. Because it's, it's you have a little bit more of an in. Because LinkedIn, like Megan said, there's more users on LinkedIn, which is nice when you're trying to connect and make a network, but if you're applying to something on LinkedIn, you also have more competition because there's a lot more people on there. Whereas Handshake is really targeted to students and specifically to Grand Valley students. If you're seeing opportunities, often it's because that employer connected directly with Grand Valley and wants our students and wants our alumni. So I think you have almost a little bit of a higher chance of getting a job through Handshake than you might through LinkedIn, but you might find more opportunities on LinkedIn, if that makes sense. Another cool thing about recruiters and Handshake is that they can send you messages, which I know I've heard from students that they're worried that it's spam 'cause they're receiving these messages, and I think we're all trained nowadays to be careful of that. Which you should be. Like you wanna be careful of like phishing scams and things like that. But Handshake, one nice thing about it is we do vet the employers who are on there. Exactly. We can't 100% guarantee that there isn't going to be something on there that shouldn't be, but more than likely, whoever is contacting you is actually looking for talent. And they, you know, the job offers are real, or not offers, but like their interest is real. And the positions are real. So I know I have a fake student account and I sometimes get, you know, messages from employers looking to fill positions or -

Megan Riksen:

Sometimes they'll even be saying like, come and join us at Booth E one at the career fair. Like I got a bunch of those around career fair time. So it can be kind of helpful.

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. So definitely the whole point of that is to make sure you are checking those messages. And actually if there's something you're not interested in, you can ignore it, but they are real and they're real people reaching out to you.

Megan Riksen:

And you can probably have a dialogue back and forth. You know, that messaging feature.

Grace Joaquin:

Take advantage for sure. You can also reach out to your recruiters, which is the flip side of it. So that's nice too. So if there's a specific company that you're interested in, you can search them up on Handshake in the search bar, find that company, you can follow them. Then you'll get emails and notifications when they post jobs and things like that. So you can be one of the first to see that. And then you can also potentially reach out to the recruiter from that organization. They usually will list that on their, if you click the employer's company name, you'll go to their Handshake page and you can see a public staff list potentially who you could reach out to. You'll often have like an email you can send inquiries to. Or you can just message them as well, so there's a lot of ways for you to network through Handshake with recruiters of different companies. And then finally, as Megan said, there's a lot of other reasons to use Handshake too, other than just that job piece. We also have our events listed on there like she mentioned. If you wanna make an appointment with a career advisor, you have to do it through Handshake. So that's the only way that you can make an appointment with us. It has all of our schedules on there and everything like that. You can find volunteer positions, you can also network with other students, which we can go more into detail with later. But there's a lot of reasons to use it and we really recommend that you have that app on your phone as a student, as a freshman. And really get in there as often as you can to see what's happening on your campus, to see what you might be doing to grow your profession, or like, your career path.

Megan Riksen:

Exactly. Yeah. Use some of those features like Grace mentioned like the, you know, following employers and things like that. It's a nice way to kind of passively always be working on, you know, your future goals, your future career, or at least figuring out what those might be. Okay. So a little more on LinkedIn. LinkedIn also has the ability for recruiters and students to connect. But it also allows you to connect with anyone. So that definitely is a big distinction between the two platforms. Because on LinkedIn, as I mentioned, it's global. So different from Handshake where you're likely just connecting with the people who are doing recruiting for their organization. Linkedin is probably a really great place to just start to make some connections in your field for things like an informational interview, or a job shadow, or just to have a little bit of an email exchange if you have a few questions to ask someone. The alumni features specifically on LinkedIn, you can actually go to Grand Valley State University and then you'll, you'll be able to see a little tab once you get to that page that says alumni. And you can search through the whole database full of alums.

Grace Joaquin:

I think right now it's over a hundred thousand.

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. Over a hundred thousand alums who have LinkedIn accounts. So that's a really great starting point if you're feeling overwhelmed. But it's also great to just brainstorm all the people, you know, <laugh> as well and connect with them. Because that's I think really what we're, what you're trying to do. Just a quick thing to mention, 'cause I know it can get really confusing. There are different degree connections that you're gonna have on LinkedIn. So first degree connections are the people that you have directly connected with you yourself. You can message them as much as you want. It's basically, you know, like a fringe connection Right. Or a follower. Second degree then is people who are connected to your first degree connections and typically you're able to reach out to those folks as well to send an invitation to connect. But then you're gonna have many, many, many millions of third degree connections as well who are connected to your second degree connections. You're not going to be able to necessarily reach out to these people, but you can kind of see their profile. But you would want to kind of expand your network. Gaining more first degree connections then obviously opens up more second degree and would move some of those third degree into second degree, if that makes sense.

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. It's hard to explain, but essentially the more connections you have, the the better. The more information you'll be able to gather, the more people profiles you'll be able to see.

Megan Riksen:

And, you know, find those super connectors on LinkedIn. Right.

Grace Joaquin:

Here's a hint, your career advisors

Megan Riksen:

Yeah. Your career advisor probably has been connecting with students they've met with and alums and all of that. So that's a really good person to start with who might have like a thousand connections and then that opens up a lot more second connections for you in the, in the field.

Grace Joaquin:

And I always like to say too that this is not the same - so on LinkedIn, if you send a connection request to your professor or to your career advisor or like literally, even if you've never met Megan and I, you know our names. Look us up on, on LinkedIn, connect with us. It's not the same as if you did that on Snapchat or Facebook or Instagram where it would be a little bit weird maybe for -

Megan Riksen:

For a stranger to reach out.

Grace Joaquin:

Or to reach out to someone at your school, like a professor or something. Linkedin is not the same. If you're reaching out to someone at school, you could probably just connect and not really give an explanation even if you don't know them. But what would you say if they're reaching out to someone on LinkedIn that's not related to Grand Valley and they don't know what should they do in that case?

Megan Riksen:

Then LinkedIn does have a nice feature when you're sending a connection request where you, you get a certain number of characters where you can write a little note.So always recommend that where you can say, hello, I'm Megan, I'm reaching out because I really think your job history looks cool and I'd love to pick your brain about how you got to where you are today. Or you know, something like that where you're just kind of giving a reason for why you wanna connect.

Grace Joaquin:

That makes sense. That way they don't think it is spam, like we talked about earlier, a scam.

Megan Riksen:

Yes, exactly. You know, something else I just thought of is if you're looking to move, LinkedIn can come in very handy as well. Because you can try to start making some connections in, in the city that you're moving to as well. Again, start with alums. I'm always shocked by the, you know, reach of our alumni community. Alums are everywhere. Especially if you're moving to a big city, there will definitely be some GVSU alums there that you can connect with, even if they're in a completely different field. I still think that can be really useful.

Grace Joaquin:

That's your network, right? Like that's part of the benefit of going to Grand Valley is now you have this connection to all of these other Lakers. They're part of your network.

Megan Riksen:

Yep, exactly. Just like on Handshake, you can follow companies and organizations that you want to work for through LinkedIn. Most companies will have a LinkedIn page, so that's a good thing to do. 'cause You can kind of keep up on their news and their postings. Companies can post open positions as well. So I, you know, I've had students have success using the job search feature on LinkedIn for sure. Just kind of another tool in your toolbox to think about when you're doing a job search.

Grace Joaquin:

Yeah. And it just doesn't hurt and it, it takes, it doesn't take have to take too long to set up an account, create a profile for either of these really.

Megan Riksen:

Exactly. Right.

Grace Joaquin:

I do think one barrier of that we haven't mentioned can be a headshot because for both of these you will want to upload a headshot for that profile. If you don't, like, if you're a freshman or a sophomore, if you have a senior photo, honestly, like that could probably work. If you're, you know, past that phase you might wanna get a more updated one. We have a headshot,

Megan Riksen:

We call it our headshot hub.

Grace Joaquin:

Our headshot hub here at the Career Center on both locations. So in Allendale and downtown. Where you can literally just walk in and we have a, a station where you, we have a ring light, we have a backdrop, and then you put your phone right into it and you can take a really nice headshot. You want, you'll wanna wear like something sort of professional on the top. But yeah, so you can create that for free.

Megan Riksen:

I've done it, it I can, you can actually, you know, you crop the photo. You might add a little bit of a filter. You can make it look quite nice.

Grace Joaquin:

I know, because now the phones that we have, the, the cameras are very good quality. Even going outside and standing in front of some of the brick or something and having a friend take a, a photo that could work.

Megan Riksen:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You don't have to pay $200 to sit down for a professional headshot session <laugh>.

Grace Joaquin:

So don't let that be a barrier.

Megan Riksen:

No, definitely not. But but do get a more professional looking photo up there with just yourself in it.

Grace Joaquin:

Yes, exactly. And then to kind of bounce off what you were saying, Megan, with connecting one last thing I'll mention about Handshake is you can also connect with people on Handshake, similar, kind of similar to LinkedIn. You're not creating this network like you do on LinkedIn where you have these first degree degrees, second degree, et cetera. But you can also find current students and alumni on Handshake. I think one of the most common ways people do that is like if you're interested in a specific employer, you might go to that employer's page on Handshake and you can see all of the students who have worked there, not just Grand Valley students. Although those will come up, but other.

Megan Riksen:

Nationally, yes.

Grace Joaquin:

And so like you might see, oh, there was a student at MSU who interned at this really cool place I wanna go to, and you can send that student a message on Handshake. And that is another great way to connect and to find out about different opportunities. And it might even be slightly less intimidating because you're connecting to your fellow students. So it might even be a good way to like dip your toe in that the pond of like connecting to people you don't know. Oh. And then I do have an example too of how those how connecting through Handshake has benefited one of our students. I know it has benefited more than just one. But we have a specific example. So just like with my husband Victor we had in that same negotiation episode from last season, we interviewed another person on our podcast, Maddie, who was a career connector in our office. And she received a job offer through Handshake. So she was recruited through Handshake similarly to how Victor was recruited through LinkedIn. So again, you know, not only can you reach out to fellow students, et cetera, and we talked about reaching out to recruiters, but they can reach out to you and it can really benefit you and, and end up with these really great opportunities and she ended up taking the job and that's what she's currently doing. So just be open to like the, like check your messages on Handshake and LinkedIn and be open to connecting to people through both.

Megan Riksen:

Right. I think that's great advice. Okay. We kind of sum, yeah, we kind of, you know, went through both. So now I wanna summarize. You know, both platforms can help you find a job. The job search functionality both can allow the user to set up, you know, your personal profile and then start connecting to others. Whether that's the whole global network of professionals on LinkedIn or kind of the recruiters and peers on Handshake and both platforms are free. Which is great. So, you know, you can definitely do both. And they both have mobile apps and I would say specifically with, with Handshake, I, I do think the app can come in really handy. Linkedin's biggest advantage is being able to network with people in any industry. And then we would say Handshake's biggest advantage is that it's created for university students, so it's again, kind of that career management tool for you while you are a student or a recent alum. So hopefully this was helpful. If you have more questions, of course. I feel like I say that this at the end of every episode, but come in and chat with one of us. A career lab is open every day. And we'd love to kind of talk through this or help you with your profile, things like that. So thank you so much to everyone for listening, and we hope you tune in to a future episode soon.