Head of Brand Marketing

We are thrilled to announce Handshake’s $200M Series F funding round. At Handshake, we believe that a career opportunity shouldn’t be determined by who you know or what you’ve done. It’s about what you can - and will - do. Your future, not your past. Our Series F fundraise and new valuation of $3.5B will fuel our next phase of growth and propel our mission to help more people start, restart, and jumpstart their careers.

Handshake is the #1 place to launch a career with no connections, experience, or luck required. Handshake’s community includes 20 million students and young alumni around the world from 1,400 educational institutions, including four-year colleges, community colleges, boot camps, and 290+ minority-serving institutions. The platform connects up-and-coming talent with 650,000+ employers - from Fortune 500 companies like Google, Nike, and Target to thousands of public school districts, healthcare systems, nonprofits, and even sports teams like the LA Dodgers. Handshake is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, New York, and London and teammates working globally.

Everyone is welcome at Handshake. We know diverse teams build better products and we are committed to creating an inclusive culture built on a foundation of respect for all individuals. We strongly encourage candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, historically marginalized or underrepresented groups to apply.

If you are not sure that you’re 100% qualified, but up for the challenge – we want you to apply. We believe skills are transferable and passion for our mission goes a long way.

Your Impact

Handshake seeks a Head of Brand Strategy to lead the development and evolution of our brand. You will play an integral role in advancing Handshake's purpose, vision, brand, and positioning to drive awareness, familiarity, and favorability with all stakeholders including students, education partners, employers, and key influencers (media, policy makers, economists, etc). Working closely with our CMO, Product, and Design teams, you will build a clear and actionable cross-marketplace brand strategy and architecture to articulate our unique and differentiated point of view to inform our thought leadership, marketing and brand communications, and growth strategies. Your work will create a bridge across contexts—our company culture, business goals, customer experience, and the broader cultural context in which we must play a role—to create a cohesive brand narrative that defines our reason to exist in the world, guiding our campaigns, messaging, and experiences and identifying new, breakthrough brand-building opportunities. Handshake is and has the power to make real, tangible impact, democratizing opportunity for today’s rising talent to build a more diverse and equitable future of work for all. We’ve already made great strides in achieving our vision, but we’re just getting started.

Your Role

Brand Strategy

• Develop and implement an integrated, strategic brand plan to advance Handshake’s brand positioning and thought leadership strategy; broaden awareness of its programs and priorities; and increase the visibility of its impact across key stakeholder audiences.
• Engage with Data, Insights, and UXR teams (and agencies when needed) to derive qualitative and quantitative insights around motivations, behavior, attitudes and latent needs among key audiences.
• Build a brand architecture that will serve as our scalable toolbox for internal and external partners to ensure all work is aligned
• Develop relationships and work closely with global marketing teams to develop relevant marketing plans for new market launches and sustained support
• Serve as a brand ambassador to the organization, partners and stakeholders.
• Stay current with thought leadership and branding trends, new technology solutions and competitive strategies, translating that knowledge into new ideas for internal stakeholders.
• Lead brand strategy to produce compelling digital and in person experiences for visually sophisticated audiences.
• Inform communications strategy that will elevate the Handshake brand and enhance meaningful relationships with early careerists, employers and educators.
  

Brand Experience

• Partner with Design to develop brand standards to ensure consistency in brand design/tone of voice across online and offline in owned, educational and career channels
• Elevate storytelling by partnering with Head of Brand Design on strategy for internal creative, and external agency teams to develop and refresh all brand assets, including messaging/content and video/motion.
• Partner with Brand Design and PMM team on strategies to develop branded consumer experiences, and ensure that new innovation is consumer-driven, differentiated and impactful in the market
  

Measurement

• Improve our brand awareness and perception across audiences.
• Make confident, timely, data-driven decisions when confronted with ambiguity or incomplete information
• Develop metrics and methodology to track and measure brand health and the downstream impact on our business results, in partnership with Analytics.
• Measure the performance of all activities and campaigns, assess them against goals (ROI, KPIs) and adjust strategy & activities to achieve them
  

Your Experience

• Proven track record of successfully building B2B and B2C brands. Marketplace experience a plus.
• Experience creating effective, multi-channel awareness and community building campaigns, with a particular emphasis on social (TikTok, Instagram). Have built influencer partnership strategies with proven ROI.
• Have built, managed, and scaled high-performing, cross-functional brand teams
• Have built brand systems and processes to scale: guidelines, briefs, comms docs, etc
• Strong understanding of when and how to work with freelancers and agencies to get the best output (and when to bring work in-house)
  

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all roles based on function, level, and geographic location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. In order to be compliant with local legislation, as well as to provide greater transparency to candidates, we share salary ranges on all job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including geographic location as well as candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Benefits

At Handshake, we'll give you the tools to feel healthy, happy and secure.

• Stock: Ownership in a fast-growing company.
• Hub-Based Remote Work: Handshakers can enjoy the flexibility of remote work whilst ensuring in-person collaboration, and team experiences remain possible.
• Financial Management with Origin: We provide you with a professional financial planner via Origin to gain a better understanding of making the most of your compensation, equity, benefits, and perks.
• Paid Parental Leave: All new parents at Handshake (both birth and non-birth giving) are encouraged to take time to focus on their growing family and are eligible for paid family leave. US Handshakers are provided up to 16 weeks of paid family leave for birth-giving parents and 10 weeks for non-birth-giving parents.
• Mental Health Assistance: We are here to support you in every step of your mental health journey; our benefits include Employee Assistance Programs that offer counseling support for those eligible.
• Home Office Stipend: Handshake offers $500/£360 for you to spend on setting up a productive and comfortable workspace at home.
• Learning: Learning & Development opportunities and an annual $2,000/£1,500 stipend for you to grow your skills and career.
• Team Bonding: Regularly scheduled virtual company-wide and team events! Once it’s safe, we’ll provide meaningful connection points throughout the year for Handshakers to build community and meet teammates in person.
• Great team: Working with fun, hardworking, nice people who are committed to making a difference!
  

(US Handshakers)

• 401k: We care about your ability to save for your future. Launching Spring 2022, Handshake will offer a dollar-for-dollar match on 1% of deferred salary, up to a maximum of $1,200 per year.
• Healthcare: World-class medical, dental, and vision policies including LGTBQ+ Coverage.
• 2022 Time Off: All full-time US-based Handshakers are eligible for our flexible time off policy to get out and see the world. We also offer 8 standardized holidays, 2 additional days of flexible holiday time off, and 2 one-week periods of Collective Time Off (7/4-7/8/2022) and (12/26-12/30/2022).
  

(UK Handshakers)

• Pension: Handshake matches 3% of your salary towards your pension scheme.
• Healthcare: Handshake's comprehensive healthcare policy covers 100% of employee premiums & 100% of dependent premiums for medical, dental, and vision benefits.
• 2022 Time Off: Up to 25 days of vacation to encourage people to reset, recharge, and refresh, in addition to 8 bank holidays throughout the year.
  

Benefits above apply to employees in full-time positions.

Looking for more? Explore our comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.

Interested in what Handshake’s San Francisco HQ is like when we’re together? Check out this video: