Barnard College Barnard College
Get Support. Give Back.

Alum Toolkit

Welcome! The Beyond Barnard Alum Toolkit will provide guidance as you navigate your ongoing career and academic journey. This toolkit can be utilized as a first step in your process. If you’re interested in discussing any of these or other items with a Beyond Barnard advisor, please schedule an appointment via Handshake (more details on advising available at the end of this toolkit). You can also email your questions to beyondbarnard@barnard.edu.

Beyond Barnard hosts a job portal available to alums, Handshake. Go to barnard.joinhandshake.com to log on to Handshake.

Beyond the user-friendly, easily navigable layout, Handshake enables you to:

  • Apply to jobs posted by our employer partners,
  • Recruit Barnard students and/or alumnae for your company or organization,
  • Register for a 1:1 advising session to discuss careers, graduate school, competitive fellowships, and more with a Beyond Barnard advisor
  • Learn about upcoming Beyond Barnard events and programs for alums

Although many of the jobs posted on Handshake are targeted to current students and recent grads, an increasing number of employers are posting jobs for alums that are further along in their careers. We encourage alums to look for jobs on Handshake, as just one of several resources in their job search.

There are two types of Handshake accounts used for different purposes:

  1. Alum Account: Used to access the jobs board, sign up for advising, and to register for Beyond Barnard offerings for alums.
  2. Employer Account: Used to recruit Barnard students and alums for internship and job opportunities with you/your company.

Alum Accounts

If you had Handshake access as a student, we will update your account status to alum when you graduate and there is nothing you have to do to make this happen. You should email us with your new preferred email address so that system/appointment reminders go to your current email and not your old student email.  

For young alums who just graduated: GBear student email accounts are deactivated each year on August 1. Beyond Barnard will replace the .edu student email on your account with the personal email address you shared with Barnard during graduation prep. Click here for instructions on how to use this email to set a new password to ensure seamless access to advising, resources, and events after graduation.

If Handshake was not around when you were a student at Barnard, you can request a Handshake account at barnard.joinhandshake.com. 

Complete your profile and begin using your Handshake account to peruse job opportunities, be visible to employers looking for alumnae hires, and register for Beyond Barnard offerings for alums.

By default, your profile information will not be shared with anyone outside of the College. However, you may opt-in for your profile to be seen by employers that are approved by the College or by other alums.

What is a complete profile?

  • Work experience - employers want to know about your prior experiences. Share where you’ve worked or interned before, even part-time or volunteering.
  • Organizations - Hiring decisions aren't just about your skills and experiences. Highlight your professional organizations. Recruiters want to know what you're passionate about.
  • Skills - Showcase the top skills you'll bring to a new job. What makes you a great fit for certain roles? Keep adding as you build more.

Click Here to Complete your Profile

Employer Account:

Click here to follow step by step instructions for creating an employer account and posting your first job. 

(For all types of new accounts, please allow up to 2 business days for accounts to be verified.)

If you encounter any problems creating or updating your account, if you’re not sure whether you have an account, or if you previously had an account under a different email (a Barnard one or a non-Barnard one) you should email beyondbarnard@barnard.edu for help.

If you are interested in posting a babysitting job, please review these instructions.

Barnard Connect

Launched in Fall 2019, Barnard Connect is an online platform that facilitates student to alum and alum to alum connections for the purposes of networking and establishing mentoring relationships. Now with more than 4,000 members, Barnard Connect allows members of the community to create profiles that feature information about their professional background, identity, interests, and more. Students and alums can reach out to one another directly on the basis of shared affinities.

Alum to Alum Mentoring Guide

Read more about resources and strategies for networking with fellow alums and establishing Mentorships in this Alum to Alum Mentoring Guide.

You can find all of our recorded workshops, panels, and information sessions on the Beyond Barnard Youtube Channel.

Career Transitions Alum Webinar Series: 

Managing the School-to-Work Transition Series:

Jump Start Your Job Search: A Webinar Series for Alums:

Full Playlist (8 videos)

Guest Webinar: The Neuroscience of Career Success

JobInnerview 

JobInnerview is a multimedia e-learning platform designed to train people to excel in a job interview. The program consists of 12 five-minute videos, each corresponding to a step in the interview process. Each module comes with a quiz and a series of exercises to thoroughly prepare the candidate for an interview and help them win the job. It's an inexpensive, virtual, automated training tool that can be used anywhere, any time. Barnard alum Rebekah Crawford ’93 is a founding partner of the company.

Resumes

Cover Letters

For individual questions or concerns about your own resume, please schedule an advising appointment via Handshake or contact Beyond Barnard at 212.854.2033 or beyondbarnard@barnard.edu to schedule an appointment.

Companies will often outsource recruitment for certain positions to third-party recruitment agencies. There are various types of recruitment agencies that specialize in hiring for different types and levels of roles: 

  1. Temporary, temp-to-perm, and general recruitment: Often housed under the same roof, these recruitment agencies focus on staffing for a wide variety of roles varying in length ranging from short-term assignments, roles that begin as temporary but have the possibility to become permanent staff positions based on budget, company need, and fit, and regular ongoing staff roles.
  2. Executive Search Firms: Specialize in identifying, engaging, and placing high level executives and institutional leaders.

Tips for working with recruiters:

  • Working with a legitimate recruiter should always be free for the job seeker, as recruiters are paid by the company for which they are staffing. If a recruitment agency states that there is a fee for working with them, walk away.
  • A recruiter’s primary client is the company, not the job seeker. For more traction in working with recruiters, prepare to be “politely persistent”. After creating an account on the agency’s website, if you don’t hear from the agency within a week, call them and ask to schedule a meeting to speak with one of their recruiters. Often, you will not be on the active job seekers list until this introductory conversation – to review your experience and what you are seeking – has occurred. 
  • Plan to follow up periodically with the recruiter if you’ve not heard from them or been sent roles to consider in a while (every 3 weeks or so is appropriate). 
  • Help the recruiter help you. If they send you a job to consider that won't work for you, give them feedback on why and state what would work. The more specific you can be, the better positioned they will be to find the right roles for you.
  •  Sign up with multiple recruitment agencies. It can’t hurt to have people looking for jobs for you while you are engaging in your own search. 
  • Quality of recruitment agencies can vary greatly, as can experience with specific recruiters within the same agency. Vet agencies by looking them up on the Better Business Bureau and ask your network if anyone has worked with an agency or recruiter that they really liked.
  • If a recruiter reaches out to you via LinkedIn, email, or another platform, be aware that they often will not yet have looked carefully at your profile or resume. Recruiters often cast a wide net, based on a skills or keyword search, then wait to see who responds. At that point they may look more carefully at your profile but choose not to move forward or to communicate further -- even though they reached out to you first! Try not to take this personally and instead, follow up with more details on what you're looking for or what your transferable skills are, or just move forward in your search.
  • While Beyond Barnard can’t personally recommend or guarantee a positive experience with any specific recruitment agencies, check out online reviews and best-of lists of recruitment agencies such as this one from Forbes.

iRelaunch

iRelaunch’s mission is to eliminate bias against people who take extended career breaks. iRelaunch seeks to normalize the decision to take a career break and recognizes this untapped talent pool for what it is: highly educated, experienced, and motivated.  As a pioneering company in the career reentry space, iRelaunch is in a position to influence the conversations at employers and among relaunchers about what it means to take a career break and the caliber of the relauncher talent pool. As a result, career breaks have been completely reframed: it used to be that a career break was a reason to reject a candidate. Now career breaks are required to be eligible to apply for and participate in employer return to work programs. Check out their job board for Return to Work programs and more.

Path Forward

Welcome to the place where your career break won’t stand in your way! Path Forward connects you to returnships and job opportunities with employers who support your return to work – and don’t mind your resume gap.

Women Back to Work

Bridging the gap between talented women in technology and open career opportunities. Women deserve the opportunity to re-enter the workforce. Businesses deserve qualified talent to elevate their productivity.

Apres

Apres is a curated job market geared specifically to women seeking re-entry into the workforce. Apres includes a variety of sectors and a wide array of job types, as well as career resources for those returning to work after a gap

If you are interested in applying to medical or dental school in the future and would like to receive updates about Barnard's Committee process, please write to prehealthadvising@barnard.edu and let us know in which year you plan to apply.

Barnard alums have full access to advising appointments for life with no limitations based on age, career stage, or industry. Make an appointment at Handshake you can reach out to beyondbarnard@barnard.edu with any questions that arise. 

Drop-in advising for alums takes place on Mondays from 12:00pm - 1:00pm Eastern time on Zoom (except for holidays/college closures). For the fall 2024 semester, alum drop-ins will conclude on the last day of classes, December 9. These are shorter 15-minute sessions and no appointment is needed. Alums will be seen on a first come, first served basis. Email beyondbarnard@barnard.edu for the current Zoom link.