Connect your community engagement opportunities with our students through Handshake! Additionally, it offers expanded recruitment potential:

• Managing all your campuses with Handshake at no cost
• A mobile experience - update your community engagement opportunities and more while on the go using Handshake's responsive design

Handshake Resources

• Handshake Employer Help Center
• Create an Account
• Connect with GVSU

1.  Go to  https://app.joinhandshake.com/employer_registrations/new, to create an employer account.

 2. Join your existing company on Handshake, or create a new one.

• You will need to be connected to your company profile on Handshake prior to taking any actions with schools. Your company should pull up based on the domain of your email address if it is already in Handshake. If it isn't, you should see the option to create a new company profile.

3. Request to connect with Grand Valley and other Universities.

• You must request and receive approval from a University prior to posting opportunities there. 

4. Start Posting Community Engagement Opportunities, Jobs, and more! 

Questions on Creating an Account? Contact [email protected] or (616) 331-2348.

Community Engagement Opportunity Criteria

In order to post and have your listing approved by the Office of Student Life: Civic Engagement, community partners and postings must comply with the following standards: 

• Provide complete organizational contact information (organization name, address, organization URL, organization description, contact name, organizational email address for contact, contact phone number).
• Local or regional geographic location
• 501c3 organization 
• Postings with expiration dates more than one year after the initial posting date will not be approved.
  • To ensure maximum exposure, we recommend expiration dates between two-weeks and six-months from the initial posting date.
• No fees of any kind may be charged to students or alumni.

How to Post a Community Engagement Opportunity

This will follow the same steps as if you were posting a job on Handshake.

1. Start by clicking Post a Job from your home dashboard, or clicking on Jobs in the left-hand navigation bar and clicking Create Job in the top right-hand corner. 

2. Fill out Job Title, Company, Job Type, Employment Type & Duration

• Choose Volunteer for Job Type

• When selecting Temporary / Seasonal, you'll need to add both the start and end dates.

3. Next add a description, # of students needed, and location

• If you copy and paste a description from your website, it will retain your formatting
• As you start typing the address, some suggestions will show up in the address field - you must select one rather than manually typing it in
  • If you do not see your location listed, please submit feedback to Mapbox here: https://www.mapbox.com/geocoder-feedback/
• If your opportunity is in multiple locations you can select Add Another Location

4. Next add Job Preferences 

5. Go through School Selection 

• Add schools using the dropdown, and you'll see them appear in the table
• If your organization has not been approved to post jobs at Grand Valley, you will not see that as an option

6. Click save and you have posted your community engagement opportunity! 

Questions on Creating an Account? Contact [email protected] or (616) 331-2345.

Posting Resources 

• Handshake Help Center: Employers
• How to Post a Job on Handshake
• Setting Reasonable Deadlines for Job Offers
• Handshake FAQs