Handshake Talent Engagement Suite vs. Whova

Compared to bulk messaging students who are listed as 'matches' on the job listing page, the segments & campaigns I created were so helpful in identifying leads & helping to convert those leads to applicants without me having to continually follow-up with students (thank you- follow-up email feature!) For roles that require a lot of applicant flow, or for positions that require a large cohort of hires at one time, these features are perfect.

Incentivized

Overall having the Whova app was extremely helpful to provide information and drive engagement in the audience/attendees both on-site and remote. The ability to connect with like-minded attendees both pre-event and during the event was particularly helpful. Clarifying directions for "entering" events remotely would negate user anxiety.

• Connects us with our target audience (current college students and recent graduates).
• Connects us with a variety of career services offices, building trust in our organization.
• It provides capacity to our recruiters while also allowing us to balance volume and personalization in recruitment.

Incentivized

• facilitated the sharing of research, perspectives, and resources on topics of interest
• enabled easier connection to new and existing relationships with conference delegates and speakers
• allowed me to catch up on content I missed due to time conflicts for concurrent sessions

• I would love if there were a better way to filter by experience. Currently, it's based on graduation date but a lot of my talent segments pick up people with 10+ years of experience that recently started or completed another degree. This is frustrating for the candidate who receives a bunch of misplaced messages and for recruiters who have to explain why they received a message about an internship they are clearly overqualified for. Can we separate grad year from years of experience in the segmentation somehow?
• I wish there were an easier way to "blacklist" candidates who were rude or expressed a sentiment of never wanting to hear from me or my company again. These are people that I don't want to accidentally include in a campaign message 6 months later.

Incentivized

• Literature and pictures uploaded but no easy way to download the collection.
• No easy way to access information after the period after the conference ended.
• No easy way to access the list of participants and contact information - could be pdf'd.
• There was a little connectivity issues but not much.
• Some of the meetings were scheduled while we slept.
• The cost of using Whova for small meetings.

Incentivized

It works and has been a valuable tool for recruitment and talent engagement

Incentivized

We already registered with Whova for our 2024 event and we will continue to use Whova for the foreseeable future as long as the price doesn't rise too high. It was a bit of a shock to see the difference between last year's price and this year's price - nearly 2k increase! We were able to negotiate, thankfully, to lower the price.

It is intuitive

Incentivized

Whova is quite user friendly, and helpful for the conference planner. It has features such as sample emails to attendees and import abilities if you have your sessions on a spreadsheet to avoid having to enter each session manually. Another thing we didn't like was the inability to allow attendees to enter a pre-recorded session only when it is scheduled to be presented. It's either all pre-recorded can be viewed once the conference opens, or none.

We had no availability issues!

We had no performance issues with our event delivery. We did have some meet-ups that had some glitches for some attendees, but I believe they were quickly resolved and were more on the part of user error than anything. Once they got the hang of it, their meet-ups went more smoothly.

Becca always responds very quickly to my questions. We had an issue where I couldn't register for a fair because another division of my company had already registered and this problem was fixed the next day. I feel like the team at Handshake Talent Engagement Suite actually cares about my experience. Not all companies do once the contract is signed! They definitely treat their customers well. I literally feel like I am their only customer.

Incentivized

I only had a single issue regarding a photograph that was handled immediately and a colleague somehow ended up with two profiles which was also handled right away. Those two instances are all I have to go by. Other than that it was smooth but I did have ample information regarding who to contact if I experienced an issue

It is a great product and valuable tool for recruitment and sourcing of talent

Incentivized

I found Whova to be similar to many social media apps that I already use. It was easy to navigate. This was my second experience using Whova in my presenter role. I liked the icebreaker section to connect with other participants before the event started. I look forward to next year’s event.

Handshake and Untapped both have their pros and cons. The campaign features in Handshake are really unparalleled and allow you to reach a relevant and diverse set of students quickly and efficiently. Untapped has the ability to go through the profiles of individual students to really source specific people (which Handshake doesn't allow), but the filtering features needed work and it was tougher to reach a lot of students at once.

Incentivized

I can't recall the other apps, I've used before, but did have two prior conferences with different apps. I would definitely choose Whova over those other experiences because of the overall package. I also can't say enough about the opportunity to create personal groups to meet with attendees directly. It can often be very intimidating to connect on a larger scale when you don't know anyone, but that option along with the roster (plus option to bookmark people) helped me learn more of my colleagues.

Everyone on our team had their assigned tasks to complete in Whova on a weekly basis and did so with ease and confidence.

• Handshake has definitely positively impacted our business objectives. Handshake pulled some data for us and we found out that 39% of our hired interns & new grads thus far followed up with us, received a message, or RSVP'd to an event on Handshake so far this year.

Incentivized

• Whova made our virtual and hybrid events possible! Our virtual attendees loved the ability to interact and engage with each other, the exhibitors, the speakers and organizers of the event. It also allowed our in-person attendees to do the same, and navigate the conference on-site.
• Whova made organizing the conference possible for our small staffed organization! We only have 1.25 FTEs and were able to pull off a hybrid conference in 2022. It wouldn’t have been possible without Whova!

Incentivized