Schedule a Student Engagement Event

Student Engagement events are typically held during the academic year (September-November and January-April). Please review our 2024-2025 Recruitment Dates to avoid scheduling recruiting activities during our black out dates.

On-campus student engagement events are held Monday through Thursday as early as 5:00pm and ending no later than 9:15pm. Occasionally, mid-day sessions may be held Monday through Friday beginning and ending between 11:30am-1:30pm.

Virtual student engagement events can be hosted at various times throughout the day and evening. Our recommendation is late afternoon/early evening. We encourage you to keep your on-campus and virtual sessions at 90 minutes or less.

Note: Undergraduate focused recruitment events scheduled outside of the Duke recruitment season must be requested in Handshake as virtual/multi school events.

Once you’ve decided on a date and confirmed that it does not conflict with a black out date, submit your event request in Handshake. After your on-campus event is approved via Handshake by our team, we will send you information for booking a venue. It is the employer’s responsibility to contact one of the approved campus venues to check space availability and reserve/pay for the space (venue costs vary).

All requests for student engagement events must be submitted in Handshake with a minimum of two weeks between the date of the request and the date of the session. For more about requesting an event through Handshake, review their tutorial. 

Due to the high demand for student engagement events, multiple organizations may hold student engagement events in the same time slot. Although we cannot guarantee it, the Duke Career Center will aim to only have organizations of different industries in the same time slot. We ask organizations to work with us in order to allow our students to attend as many student engagement events of their interest as is possible.

Access Duke Groups for a list of student clubs and organizations. If you are looking specifically for professional organizations, select the “Career & Professional” and/or “Academic” tags on the Group Category drop down menu.

Employers may collaborate with Duke student groups and organizations when hosting student engagement events either virtually or on campus. We ask that our employer partners do not use student groups solely for the purpose of reserving event or classroom space on campus. 

Open events hosted with a student organization must be requested through Handshake for promotion. Closed events hosted with a student organization and open exclusively to members of that group should not be posted to Handshake, but must be shared with the Employer Relations team at careeremployer@duke.edu. 

Once scheduled, your student engagement events will be promoted in Handshake and on Career Hub.

Employer coffee chats (or office hours) allow for employers and students to connect informally for one-on-one or small group conversations. During coffee chats, students reserve a 15 or 20-minute time slot to meet with your organization’s representatives. Separate from interviews, these conversations are intentionally informal and allow students to learn more about your organization, receive feedback on their resume, ask about your application process, and practice for interviews.

To advertise your Coffee Chats to our students on Handshake, you may submit them as an interview schedule (if you would like students to select time slots through Handshake) or an event request (if you are using your own scheduling platform).