Handshake

The 2026 Network Trends Report is live 🙌 We started by asking early talent teams what they actually needed to know about UK students. Then we went and asked 10,000+ of them. Six chapters. Twelve actions. Everything from AI and the application process, to salary transparency, confidence gaps, and where engagement actually happens. If you work in early talent, this one's for you. Download it here → https://bit.ly/48dLLAD

The internship recruiting landscape has changed—fast. 50% of applications come in during week one. Most teams respond weeks later. That delay? It’s costing top talent. Application volume has jumped 3x per role in just a few years, and AI is accelerating that. Students aren't applying blindly anymore. If they haven't engaged with your brand before the role drops, they're already choosing someone else. The takeaway: Internship hiring is getting noisier, faster, and harder to predict. But the employers who will win in the AI economy aren't slowing down on internships. They're treating early-career talent as the pipeline strategy it's always been. The employers investing now showing up early, building real relationships, and moving quickly are the ones who won't be scrambling for talent later. Will your team keep up? Get the latest insights from our Internship Report 2026.

Our annual #HandshakeAccess conference brings together 15k leaders across F500 organizations, AI startups, higher education institutions, and much more. Join Chief Education Strategy Officer Christine Y. Cruzvergara and VP for Education, Shantanu Sinha (Google) for a fireside chat on how advances in AI and multimodal learning are reshaping higher education and what it means for institutions, employers, and the next generation of early talent. 🎟️ Grab your spot: https://bit.ly/4roGKNK 📅 May 6–7 | Free & virtual

10,000+ UK students told us exactly what employers wanted to know. Drops Monday 👀

AI is moving quickly, and so is the need for strong operators who can turn complexity into execution. At Handshake AI, we're hiring Strategic Projects Leads (SPLs) and Strategic Projects Associates (SPAs) to do just that. Curious what it's actually like to be a Strategic Projects Lead in AI? Our latest post from Handshake AI's Chief Business Officer, Yang Zhao, breaks it down — the day-to-day, the ownership model, and why SPLs are at the center of how human expertise shapes frontier AI models. Read here: https://lnkd.in/gcXzE3-D If you're analytical, high-ownership, and excited by the chance to build in one of the most important spaces in technology, we'd love to hear from you! Job description links in comments.

We gave students access to powerful AI tools just last week, and hundreds have already built products. The OpenAI x Handshake Codex Creator Challenge empowers students to take their creativity to new heights: helping to redefine what “technical talent” looks like in real-time. From psychology to marketing, students across disciplines are building real, applied AI projects and developing the skills for the AI economy. Here’s the problem: current hiring processes will cause employers to miss out on this valuable talent. Today’s most capable candidates won’t always look like the obvious ones on paper. That means, traditional filtering and recruiting models – GPA, degree field, CS-only pipelines – are no longer perfect proxies in an AI-native workforce. One simple action you can take today 👉 add a skills-based screen to your hiring process. The employers who hire on applied skills will discover talent others are missing. In a market this competitive, that's an edge worth paying attention to. Check out these cool projects by Rebecca Stafford, Rahul Kumar, Deborah A. Jean-Baptiste, Daylen Hicks, Michael Frederick, and Ariana Reese:

You won't want to miss Randy Tarnowski (Handshake), Gemma Quinn (Salesforce), Maxim Massenkoff (Anthropic), and more at this year's #HandshakeAccess.👇 📅 May 6–7 | Free & virtual 🎟️ Save your spot: https://lnkd.in/dGTuSvjP

Today's graduates are twice as likely to put AI on their resume compared to just four years ago. But here's what employers actually want to see: not the keyword, but the capability behind it. That's the idea behind the Handshake X OpenAI Codex Creator Challenge building on Handshake's AI showcase where students don't just claim AI skills, they prove them through real project work. Employers like GEICO, L'Oréal, Uber, KPFF Consulting Engineers, UBS, Sikich and ZS are already leaning in. Why? Because associates are actively scouting submissions for their next hire, and a portfolio of applied work tells them far more than a resume bullet ever could. For employers, this is a chance to: • Find candidates with verified, hands-on AI experience • Build a talent pipeline with proof baked in • Get ahead of where the next generation of AI-native talent is heading AI fluency isn't a differentiator anymore—it's the baseline. The question is who can actually use it. 👇 Learn more and get started. https://lnkd.in/gTEFadau

As a part of the Codex Creator x Handshake Challenge, I built a small side project. 'American Health Atlas' is an interactive map for exploring county-level health data and national health insurance coverage data across the United States. This site is an interesting visualizer of public data pulled from sources like County Health Rankings + U.S. Census SAHIE. It works by color coding counties based on selected health data metrics, allowing you to click on a county and view a quick profile on the data available. Special thank you to Handshake and OpenAI for offering $100 in token time to the Codex Development Tool, allowing students like me to gain experience bringing their ideas to life. Live Demo: https://lnkd.in/eiEt2AKu #DataVisualization #PublicHealth #HealthData #GIS #SideProject

Congratulations to the Emerson team on another Early Talent Award win! We're thrilled to celebrate their co-op and internship programs that give students meaningful projects to tackle real-world challenges and help make the world healthier, safer, smarter, and more sustainable. Learn more about Emerson and current open roles here: http://emr.as/isLZ50Ys074