Case Study: Handshake achieves strategic, data-driven recruiting with Gem

Handshake Elevates its Recruiters to Strategic Partners

Handshake, a job network for college students that serves 1,400+ higher-education institutions and 650,000+ employers, needed its talent acquisition team to move from administrative work to strategic partners as the company scaled (recruiting grew from a team of 2 to 37 while the company expanded rapidly). To gain the bandwidth and data-driven visibility required, Handshake implemented Gem—leveraging Gem’s Talent Pipeline and Pipeline Analytics to centralize metrics and streamline outreach and reporting.

Using Gem’s automation, outreach insights, and Talent Pipeline dashboard, Handshake recruiters saved hours on outreach, “exponentially increased” their impact, and eliminated manual reporting by accessing dependable metrics like time-to-fill and passthrough rates. Gem enabled more strategic hiring-manager syncs, allowed recruiters to take actions in their ATS from Gem’s interface, improved response rates through message optimization, and surfaced source-of-hire and funnel drop-off trends—becoming “the place for all our metrics” and improving pipeline health and hiring outcomes.

Handshake

Sam Leveston

Senior Recruiter