Duke First-Year & Sophomore Conversations–For Employers: Early Talent Engagement through the Career Center
The Duke First Year & Sophomore Conversations series is an early talent engagement program that provides our employer partners with the ability to begin networking and building relationships with Duke’s younger classes of students. Duke First Year & Sophomore Conversations is a newly created initiative that builds upon the Career Center’s previous early engagement programs, First Contact and Sophomore Conversations. We are excited to offer this program to all of our employer partners.
We view Duke First Year & Sophomore Conversations as a unique opportunity for your organization to meet with students early in their college careers to discuss details of your industry, promote internship and early career opportunities, build your brand on campus, and scout a potential pipeline of strong candidates. Additionally, this program provides a valuable opportunity for students to visualize how their education and talents can lead to satisfying and successful careers with your organization.
Your Duke First Year & Sophomore Conversations session can be customized based upon your preferences with meetings ranging from a large group of students to one-on-one discussions. Session dates are available late-January through mid-April and are held virtually.
To schedule a Duke First Year & Sophomore Conversations spring event, please complete the following steps in your Handshake account:
- Request Event: Submit your request by clicking on “Request Event”
- Event Name: List the name of your session as “First Year & Sophomore Conversations with [your organization name]”.
- Format: Select “Virtual” as the type of event.
- Web Host URL: Enter in the URL (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, etc.) that students will use to access the session. (Your organization will create this link using your preferred platform.)
- For large group sessions: Handshake defaults student engagement events to a large group format (similar to an information session). If you prefer this format, students will register through Handshake and no additional registration steps are required.
- For one-on-one or small group sessions: If you prefer to hold the session as individual chats or small group chats, you will be asked to create an outside registration method to manage the schedule of chat times outside of Handshake.
- While Handshake will be used to promote the event, student registration and assignment of chat times should be managed externally by your staff.
- In this situation, please enter the registration email or URL in the “Non-Handshake Registration URL”
- School: Select “Duke University” from the drop down menu.
- Contact: Select the event contact for your organization
- Start Date/End Date/Time Zone: Select the date and time that you would like your session to begin, the end date and time, and the time zone for the session. Please note that First-Year and Sophomore Conversations sessions are intended to be single day events. If you would like to schedule more than one date, please reach out to the Career Center.
- Registration Limit: Check box to set a maximum of students permitted to register (optional)
- Branding: Although listed as option in Handshake, we strongly encourage you to include a brief description of the session so that students better understand what will be discussed during the session.
- Once your event form has been submitted, one of our team will reach out to help confirm your session. A two week notice of your event is appreciated so that we can effectively market the session to students.
For more information or questions, please contact Leigh Ann Waring in the Duke Career Center.
