Strategic Relationship Manager Jobs

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.
Your impact
As a Relationship Manager you are responsible for ensuring your education partners are healthy, happy, successful, and retained.
You will create repeatable and reusable tactics for driving engagement across our university partners' teams, which could include everything from webinars, email nurture, product hooks, etc. You will channel the voice of the customer both quantitatively and qualitatively to rally the necessary people and highlight success.
You will report to the Manager of Education Success, working closely with customer support, sales, and marketing to deliver a world-class customer experience and drive our business through renewals and expansions.
Your role
Product Knowledge

• Deeply learning and understanding the career services space (operations, structure, and metrics)
• Identifying, diagnosing, and helping customers resolve data health issues
• Consulting with university partners on their workflows to help them adapt their processes to the Handshake product and achieve student success
• Responding to detailed inquiries that require leveraging technical product knowledge combined with your strategic understanding of Handshake and our goals
• Gathering, documenting, and sharing best practices on how university partners can better leverage the platform to drive student engagement
• Expanding and deepening product adoption and usage amongst your career center partners
• Answering questions regarding the Handshake product daily

Relationship Management

• Maintaining acute awareness of staff make-up at partner schools and ability to assist with the transition of new team members
• Conduct on-site visits with all partners and engage in strategic small group gatherings (role requires minimum of 25% travel)
• Transforming, deepening and leveraging relationships at varied levels with partners which may include developing collaborative programs, specialized meetups and tailored presentations upon request
• Effectively navigating a complex and nuanced set of relationships to build and maintain trust at scale
• Owning the core and executive relationships and ultimate success for a defined segment of university partners
• Implementing the program of recurring and on-demand touch points with partners

Partner Success, Health, and Retention

• Ensuring successful implementation for all new partners and partner offices in your book of business.
• Tracking detailed subjective health assessments to pair with data-driven account health score.
• Collaborating with Handshake’s Product and Engineering Teams to ensure that customer needs are met in an efficient and timely manner.
• Ensuring high and swift renewal rates. This may include the management of detailed contracts and security requests that are nuanced to each partner
• Using Industry landscape, current HigherEd trends, historical relationship health and product to articulate/advice /suggest clear actions
• Understanding trends with your accounts via data reporting and dashboards and taking appropriate actions to keep account health high

Operations and Marketing

• Assisting with content creation for marketing collateral to university partners
• Leading tailored presentations for select stakeholders on all 3 sides of the business (students, career services and employers).
• Developing the relevant topic, format and audience attendance for targeted programming (meetups) for key Education partners
• Helping scale, develop, document and peer-train on internal processes to support users & peers

Your Experience

• Add value to a team environment by demonstrating enthusiasm and a collaborative spirit
• Ability to internalize changing messaging and rapidly incorporate into customer convos
• Adaptable to evolving business needs and willingness to contribute to process improvement
• High degree of technical aptitude
• Deep understanding of the higher education landscape and in depth product knowledge
• Analytical, methodical approach to identifying challenges and measuring impact
• Excellent communication skills and strong executive presence
• Experience handling multiple simultaneous priorities
• Ability to prioritize workload while maintaining high attention to detail
• Highly curious with “discovery” mindset
• Experience building relationships with customers and navigating complex or difficult conversations
• Proven experience with SaaS and/or ability to quickly learn tech stack
• Ability to think critically and empathetically about the customer’s needs

Bonus areas of expertise

• 4+ years of Career Services leadership experience
• 2+ years of in-depth experience with the Handshake platform

Compensation Range

• $102,876-$133,000

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all U.S.-based 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.
About Us
Handshake is the #1 place to launch a career with no connections, experience, or luck required. The platform connects up-and-coming talent with 750,000+ employers - from Fortune 500 companies like Google, Nike, and Target to thousands of public school districts, healthcare systems, and nonprofits. In 2022 we announced our $200M Series F funding round. This Series F fundraise and valuation of $3.5B will fuel Handshake’s next phase of growth and propel our mission to help more people start, restart, and jumpstart their careers.
When it comes to our workforce strategy, we’ve thought deeply about how work-life should look here at Handshake. With our Hub-Based Remote Working strategy, employees can enjoy the flexibility of remote work, whilst ensuring collaboration and team experiences in a shared space remains possible. Handshake is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, New York, London, and Berlin and teammates working globally.
Check out our careers site to find a hub near you!
What we offer
Benefits below apply to employees in full-time positions.
At Handshake, we'll give you the tools to feel healthy, happy and secure.

• 💝 Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision policies including LGTBQ+ Coverage. We also provide resources for Mental Health Assistance, Employee Assistance Programs and counseling support.
• 📚 Generous learning & development opportunities and an annual $2,000/£1,500 stipend for you to grow your skills and career.
• 💰 Equity and ownership in a fast-growing company.
• 💻 Handshake offers $500/£360 home office stipend for you to spend during your first 3 months to create a productive and comfortable workspace at home.
• 🍼 16 Weeks of paid parental leave for birth giving parents & 10 weeks of paid parental leave for non-birth giving parents.

(US Handshakers)

• 🏦 401k Match: Handshake offers a dollar-for-dollar match on 1% of deferred salary, up to a maximum of $1,200 per year.
• 🏝 All full-time US-based Handshakers are eligible for our flexible time off policy to get out and see the world. In addition, we offer 8 standardized holidays, and 2 additional days of flexible holiday time off. Lastly, we have a Winter #ShakeBreak, a one-week period of Collective Time Off.

(UK Handshakers)

• 🏝 Up to 25 days of vacation to encourage people to reset, recharge, and refresh, in addition to 8 bank holidays throughout the year.
• 🏦 Pension Scheme: Handshake will provide you with a workplace pension, where you will make contributions based on 5% of your salary. Handshake will pay the equivalent of 3% towards your pension plan, subject to qualifying earnings limits.

For roles based in Berlin, Poland, and Romania: Please ask your recruiter about region specific benefits.
Looking for more? Explore our mission, values and comprehensive US benefits at joinhandshake.com/careers.