How to Use Handshake to Recruit Student Veterans

You posted an open role and waited for a student veteran to apply. Most of the time, nobody does. The talent is out there. You just are not reaching it. The veterans you want are on campus right now, finishing a degree on the GI Bill, but they are not searching your careers page.

Handshake is one of the cleanest ways to reach them. It is the career platform that most colleges run for their students. Career offices use it. Students apply through it. And student veterans are sitting inside it, already verified by their school. If you set it up right, you put your roles in front of them where they actually look.

This guide walks through how a midsize employer uses Handshake to find and reach student veterans. No big program needed. Just a focused setup and a few hours a month. We will cover what Handshake is, how to target student veterans without breaking any rules, and how to turn a profile into actual hires.

What is Handshake and why does it reach student veterans?

Handshake is a recruiting platform that colleges use to connect their students with jobs and internships. Students sign up with their school email. They build a profile with their major, graduation date, and what kind of work they want. Then they browse roles and apply.

On the employer side, you create a company profile, post roles, and search the candidate pool. The platform partners with a large set of colleges, including many community and technical colleges. That last part matters for veterans. A lot of student veterans go to two-year and technical schools, not just four-year universities.

Student veterans are a strong group to hire. Many are older than the average student. They already spent years in a job with real stakes. They show up, they lead, and they finish what they start. The veteran unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in 2025, lower than the 4.2 percent rate for nonveterans, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These are people who work. They are just hard to find through a normal job post.

One thing to keep straight. Handshake is a campus channel, but it is not the same as building a hands-on relationship with a school's Veterans Resource Center. We cover that direct path in our guide on recruiting veterans through community colleges. Handshake is the platform layer. The VRC is the human layer. The best employers use both.

How do you set up a Handshake profile that attracts veterans?

Your company profile is the first thing a student veteran sees. Treat it like a landing page, not a form to rush through. A weak profile makes a good candidate scroll past you.

Start with the basics done well. Write a short, plain description of what your company does. Skip the buzzwords. A veteran wants to know what the work is and whether it goes somewhere. Add real photos of your team and your space if you have them. Stock images read as fake.

Show the path, not just the job

Student veterans think in terms of growth. They came from a place where promotion was built in. So tell them where the role leads. What does a strong first year look like? What is the next step up? You do not need a fancy program. You need an honest answer.

If your company values structure, leadership, or hands-on skill, say so. Those are the words that land with someone who ran a team in the service. You are not lecturing them about the military. You are showing that you see what they bring.

Notice the second one names the role, the path, and the pay. A student veteran has bills and a plan. Vague posts make them move on. Clear posts make them apply.

How do you target student veterans on Handshake the right way?

Handshake gives employers filters to narrow the candidate pool. You can target by school, major, graduation year, and location. Use those to focus on the schools and programs that fit your roles. A school with a large veteran population is a smart place to start.

Here is the part you have to get right. You cannot screen people out for being veterans, and you cannot screen them out for not being veterans either. Targeting a school known for veterans is fine. Refusing to consider a candidate because of veteran status is not. The goal is to reach more veterans, not to exclude anyone.

The cleaner move is to attract veterans rather than filter for them. Schools tag their student veteran groups. Career offices run veteran-focused events. When you partner with the school, your role gets shared with those students directly. That brings veterans to you without you ever sorting by status.

Work with the career office, not around it

Handshake runs through the college's career office. That office decides which employers it trusts and promotes. So get on their radar. Reach out to the career center staff at the schools you care about. Tell them you want to hire their student veterans. Ask how they prefer employers engage.

Most career offices will gladly push a real local job to their veteran students. They want their vets placed. A short email to the right person can get your role in front of a student veteran group you would never find by filtering alone. The platform is the tool. The relationship is the multiplier.

How does Handshake compare to your other veteran channels?

Handshake is one channel, not the whole plan. It is strong for early-career and student veterans. It is weak for senior, experienced hires who left the service years ago. Know what it is good at before you lean on it.

For a full breakdown of where each option fits, see our ranked field guide to veteran hiring channels. And if you are deciding where to put limited time, our piece on where to post jobs to reach veterans lays out the trade-offs.

Time matters too. Campus channels build over terms, not days. If you want to know what each channel really costs in staff hours, our breakdown of the true time cost of each veteran hiring channel is worth a read before you commit.

How do you turn a Handshake profile into actual hires?

Posting a role is the easy part. Getting hires takes a repeatable rhythm. The employers who win on Handshake treat it like an ongoing channel, not a one-time post. Here is a simple sequence that works for a small team.

Read the military experience right

When a student veteran applies, their resume may still carry military words. A title like "platoon sergeant" can hide a person who led 30 people and managed a budget. Most applicant tracking systems rack and stack resumes by keyword. A great fit whose resume says "squad leader" instead of "team lead" can sink lower in the rank and never rise to the top.

So read past the words. Ask what the person actually did. Many student veterans are still learning to translate their service into civilian terms. The ones who have not finished that work yet are often your best, least-contested hires. Our guide to building the internal business case for veteran hiring helps you get your team behind this.

What should you measure to know Handshake is working?

You cannot improve what you do not track. Handshake is a slow-build channel, so do not judge it after two weeks. Give it a term or two. But do watch the right numbers from day one.

Track how many student veterans apply, how many you interview, and how many you hire. Then watch the part most employers skip. Do they stay? Six-month and twelve-month retention tells you if the channel is sending you good fits or just bodies. The U.S. Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Service offers free employer resources if you want to formalize your veteran hiring effort.

Put a dollar figure on it too. Add up the staff time and any platform cost, then divide by hires. That gives you cost per hire for the channel. Our guide on how to calculate cost-per-veteran-hire by channel shows you how to run that math and compare Handshake against your other sources.

What if you need experienced veterans, not just students?

Handshake reaches student and early-career veterans well. But a lot of your best hires already separated and are working somewhere else. They are not on a campus platform. For those, you need a candidate pool built around veterans of every stage, not just the ones still in school.

That is the gap Best Military Resume fills. Veterans build their resumes on the platform, and employers can search that pool directly. There are over 1,000 new veteran profiles added every month, and more than 72,624 resumes built on the platform. That is a fresh, growing supply of veteran candidates, from new student grads to senior leaders 20 years out.

Use Handshake for the campus layer. Use a veteran-focused pool for the experienced layer. Together they cover the whole range. If you want to skip the slow build and reach veterans who are ready now, that is what we are built for.

Veterans show up, lead, and stay. The hard part was never the people. It was finding them. Handshake gets you in front of the student ones. A veteran talent pool gets you the rest. Build both, and you stop waiting for the right hire to find your careers page.

Ready to reach veterans at every stage of their career? Connect with BMR to access our veteran talent pool and start hiring from a pool that grows every month.