
Hire Student Employees

Hire student employees
Hiring student employees is a valuable way to support student development while meeting your department’s needs. This page provides tools, policies, and step-by-step guidance to help you recruit and hire student employees effectively.
Handshake and HIRES Support
Handshake
Handshake is the platform you will utilize to post jobs and internships, advertise, and recruit student employees.
HIRES
Hire Request Student Employment System (HIRES) is the platform you will utilize to process all casual restricted student employment hiring and onboarding.
Introduction to Handshake
View this brief video and review our Handshake Glossary below to learn more about the basics of the platform.
Want to know more? View our extensive Handshake training session for a detailed demonstration of the platform.
Handshake Glossary
Company: Any organization recruiting students; for UCSC offices, the Company name would be UCSC (Name of Department).
Company Owner: One individual who grants access for “employer” requests to join the “company”.
Division: An optional way to organize a “company,” “employers” are affiliated with one division within a company, though they retain access to be able to post positions for the overall “company.” Divisions can be a helpful tool to organize current and previous job
postings particularly for larger organizations.
Employer: Any user who needs to utilize the Handshake platform for student employment recruitment (faculty or staff). Employers can be a “company owner”, “recruiter” or a “representative”. Employers belong to a company.
Owner: A single individual who grants access to other employer roles within the company.
Recruiter: The most common role among users connected to a company profile. Recruiters are not able to edit your company branding page, the account information of other recruiters, or approve new recruiters trying to gain access to your company’s account. Other than that, recruiters have full access to post jobs, interviews, and events.
User: Users may be students, alumni, employers (staff members), or Career Success staff members. All Handshake users have a username (email address) and password. Handshake users are able to actively use the platform. Employer and Career Services users may have limited access based on roles (permissions) assigned.
Features
Contacts: Contacts can be thought of as a virtual address book. Contacts may be employers, community partners, career success team, etc. A contact, unless also a user, does not have the ability to log on to, use, or have direct interaction with the Handshake platform. Although the contact does not use the platform directly, content from Handshake can be sent to contacts via email. For example, an employer contact can be listed on a job and receive applications to that job via email.
Events: Approved “companies” can post career-focused events that will be shared on the events page of Handshake. Information sessions about postings available in your office can be a popular way for you to advertise your open roles.
Fairs: UCSC offers virtual and in-person career fairs for internships and full-time opportunities.
On-Campus Interviews: Requests from off-campus organizations who want to reserve interview space on campus for interviewing. This is not available to on-campus and off-campus work-study employers.
Job Posting Key
Apply Start Date: The first day that you want the application to be available to students to apply.
Expiration Date: The last day that you want the application to be available to students.
Global Apply/Expiration Date: This is used primarily for off-campus companies. To avoid confusion, please disregard this for on campus purposes.
On Campus Student Employment: Use this designation for any UCSC-sponsored experiential learning opportunities, including off-campus work-study. Students see these positions as “on campus” which is important for filtering and highlighting your open roles.
Job Type: The job type indicates if the role is an internship, fellowship, or other opportunity. The job type will always be on campus student employment for UCSC student jobs.
Job ID: This is a unique number assigned to each job posting within Handshake that is searchable to students.
Status: The current status of your job posting; commonly pending, declined, or approved.
Creating a Handshake account
Create an employer account in Handshake. Review our video or this guide detailing how to create an account.
If you are an alumni of UCSC, please follow these directions to create an Employer account linked to your Handshake alumni account. Learn how to toggle between an alumni account and an employer account..

Connect your account to your UCSC department
Next, connect to a ‘Company’ account. Many departments on campus have created company accounts in Handshake (for example, Career Success’ company account is titled UCSC Career Success). Search for your department’s name and request to join that company. If you cannot find your department, please contact Career Success for support at ucscel@ucsc.edu. The company owner will review your request and grant you access to Handshake.
Posting a job in Handshake
Review this video and our guide to posting a job on Handshake.
Once you post a job, Career Success will review the posting and grant approval or provide feedback within 2 business days. When the position is approved, students will be able to apply to the posting until the expiration date.
Create an effective job description
When posting a job, we recommend you review our video on creating effective position descriptions.

Advertising a job
There are a number of ways to get the word out about your job posting. Students can search postings using the job title or the job posting ID number. Find your job posting ID number in Handshake in the jobs tab or by looking at an individual job posting.
Posting an event in Handshake
This video demonstrates how to post career-relevant events in Handshake. Events can be in person or virtual and can include things like information sessions about the opportunities available in your office.
Additional Handshake resources
Handshake videos
- Posting an On-Campus Work-Study Job in Handshake
- Posting an Off-Campus Work-Study Job in Handshake
- Duplicating a Job in Handshake
- Viewing Job Posting Approval/Denial Comments in Handshake
Handshake guides
For Handshake company owners

Contact our team
General Questions: csuccess@ucsc.edu
Phone: (831) 459-4420
Student employment inquiries: ucscel@ucsc.edu
