Support Specialist, Contract

Handshake is the career network for the AI economy. 20 million knowledge workers, 1,600 educational institutions, 1 million employers (including 100% of the Fortune 50), and every foundational AI lab trust Handshake to power career discovery, hiring, and upskilling, from freelance AI training gigs to first internships to full-time careers and beyond. This unique value is leading to unparalleled growth; in 2025, we tripled our ARR at scale.

Why join Handshake now:

• Shape how every career evolves in the AI economy, at global scale, with impact your friends, family and peers can see and feel

• Work hand-in-hand with world-class AI labs, Fortune 500 partners and the world’s top educational institutions

• Join a team with leadership from Scale AI, Meta, xAI, Notion, Coinbase, and Palantir, among others

• Build a massive, fast-growing business with billions in revenue

Handshake is looking to bring on a Support Specialist, Contractor to provide support to our employer, student, and career services users. This role is a 6 month contract with the possibility of contract extension or conversion to our permanent Support Specialist role upon evaluation of fit for the role and company needs. If you are resourceful and attuned to detail, love digging into a complex and technical product, building strong relationships with customers and team members, and solving a wide variety of questions, bugs, and workflow needs - this is the role for you!

You will work closely with our Support Team to provide efficient and effective support and contribute to an overall seamless experience for users. You will help unblock our users, share trends and learnings with the Support Team, and continue to improve the customer experience and our team operations. As an advocate for our career centers, students, and employer users, you’ll improve the Handshake user experience and make an impact on our mission to democratize opportunity.

• Contribute 40 hours per week during our business hours, Monday through Friday. Provide amazing email and phone support to Handshake customers via internal ticketing systems. Your day-to-day will consist of:

  • 90%: resolving questions, bugs, feedback, and general inquiries. See daily averages below:

    • Ticket Volume: ~20 - 30 email tickets per day

    • Phone Volume: ~10 calls over a 4 hour daily phone shift

  • 5%: attending team meetings (1-3 per week)

  • 5%: completing administrative tasks (emails, checking daily announcements, training, etc.)

• Note: email and phone tickets will involve highly technical troubleshooting and workflows, building and troubleshooting custom reports, and making sure to provide tailored, personal responses while building relationships

• Use app demo environments, troubleshooting tools, help center, team communication channels, and internal documentation systems to find the quality answer for a wide range of users

• Maintain a standard level of excellence in regards to response times, resolution times, equal share of queue, and the quality of the customer support experience

• Be both a support specialist and an experienced consultant for users of the Handshake platform

  Utilize internal tools to manage issues between Customer Support, Customer Success, Product, and Engineering

• Location: if working from home, you must be located in AZ, DC, CA, CO, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NC, NM, NV, NJ, NY, OR, PA, SD, TN, TX, VA, WA, or WI.

• Hours: Monday through Friday, 8am - 5pm in Eastern time zone

• Technical Aptitude: Ability to learn technical tools and concepts quickly

• Resilience: Comfort with change and ambiguity. We’re a growing startup and always refining processes, tools, etc!

• Teamwork: Connects with teammates and actively builds a sense of community on Support and with other teams. Collaborates with manager and team on daily or weekly guidance on ticket workflows and prioritization.

• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills with a clear ability to communicate complex topics with simple language.

• Results oriented and ownership: Ability to maintain or exceed ticket and quality goals. High level of self accountability and integrity for processes and metrics.

• Passion for the problem: Desire to help give people the chance to build the career they want, no matter where they're from or what school they attend

• EQ: A strong sense of empathy with users of our products and cross functional partners

• Critical Thinking: High attention to detail and ability to troubleshoot with limited information and a clear plan of action.

• Expertise and Curiosity: Retains knowledge, shows ability to partially solve issues independently, and asks questions to increase personal knowledge. Isn’t afraid to do independent research on third party tools and systems to find answers.

• Growth Mindset: Positive, eager to learn, utilizes resources, takes and gives feedback, connects with support team and key cross team stakeholders.

• Diversity and Inclusion: Eagerness to contribute to and help build a diverse and inclusive team and exhibit these values internally and externally with customers or users.

• Coverage: Can provide a regular schedule to provide consistent assistance to users. Based in the U.S. and is not a current student.

• ZenDesk experience

• Programming, IT, data analysis or computer science courses, major or certifications

• EdTech or Higher Edu, customer service, leadership background, majors, courses, certifications

• Previous experience working in an Enterprise SaaS Customer Support team at a fast-paced startup or hypergrowth tech company, or customer focused position involving technical knowledge of a company's products and services

• Relevant experience in cross - functional communication or close partnerships with various teams (Success, Sales, Product etc)

Here’s an overview of our hiring process. You can read more about it below:

• Take home test: You’ll be asked a series of interactive questions that may require answers in several formats and you should expect to spend up to 1.5 hours creating your responses. Be sure to be as detailed as possible and answer all parts of the prompt. This enables us to learn more about you and see how you approach certain scenarios. It’s also a great way for you to see what it’ll be like working with us as the questions are related to day-to-day tasks you’ll be doing on the job.

• Virtual onsite interview: You’ll be meeting with 2 team members, including the hiring manager, for a 45-minute interview. The first part of the interview will consist of a live exercise where we will assess your troubleshooting skills as you share your computer screen and navigate a prompt. During the second half, we’ll ask you a series of questions, and this is a great time to ask any questions you may have.

• Decision: We’ll let you know if we are going to extend an offer or move forward with other candidates.