Handshake is the number one site for college students to find a job. Today, the Handshake community includes 17 million students and young alumni at over 1,000 colleges and universities — including 120+ minority-serving institutions. We connect up-and-coming talent across all 50 states with nearly 500,000 employers recruiting on Handshake — from every Fortune 500 company to thousands of small businesses, nonprofits, startups, and more. Handshake is democratizing opportunity and ensuring college students have the support they need to find a great job and kick-off a meaningful career regardless of where they go to school, what they choose as a major, and who they know.

We welcome all people. We celebrate diversity of all kinds and are committed to creating an inclusive culture built on a foundation of respect for all individuals. We seek to hire, develop and retain talented people from all backgrounds. Individuals from non-traditional backgrounds, historically marginalized or underrepresented groups strongly encouraged to apply.

If you are not sure that you’re 100% qualified, but up for the challenge - we want you to apply.

Your Impact:

Handshake is looking for a Brand Designer (Contractor) to work with our Student Marketing Team and create design work that engages with a college-aged, Gen Z audience. This designer will report to the Design Lead, and work closely with other members of the Student Marketing function.

For this role, we are seeking a self-starter who knows how to take advantage of their bandwidth, hit deadlines, and produce top notch design work—but also work collaboratively and in-step with teammates. A designer that lives, breathes, and eats fonts, color palettes, and gorgeous layouts will fit in well with our team. We’re hoping to find a designer who is excited and eager to get their hands dirty, collaborate, and dive into the creative process to help continue to build the Handshake brand and development of our creative offerings. 

In this role, you will be relied upon to use your design knowledge and creative strengths to bring design work to life for marketing materials of all mediums. You will take on new projects and tasks, as we continue to develop our brand, create systems and design aesthetics, and launch campaigns across all media types (digital, social, email, print, events, etc.). 

You will also participate in a “soup to nuts” creative process where you will gain experience in converting business strategy to creative strategy, do deep dives into creative exploration, and ultimately finish out work through design execution. 

Your Role:

• Support the Design Lead and our several marketing teams: Student, University, and Employer, with a multitude of creative and design projects
• Collaborate and take direction from leadership in order to bring the brand to life in an accurate and thoughtful way
• Be tasked with pushing your creative boundaries to help identify new creative visions, invent design trends, and bring messaging to life through visuals 
• Help develop and execute the creative look for marketing projects such as emails, website design, social media posts, consumer and corporate events, internal presentations and more
• Maintain a high design and detail oriented creative execution of all work 
• Attend creative team meetings to check-in on projects, share concepts and ideas, and stay collaborative within the team 
• Attend marketing team meetings to keep connected on goals, projects, and updates
• Attend project meetings and briefings to download on aligned messaging, project goals, roadmaps, and timelines 
• Work collaboratively with the creative team, including copywriters and content creators 
• The ideal candidate will contribute to brainstorms and concepting sessions, and is eager to participate and share their ideas and perspectives

Your Experience:

• Expert knowledge and highly skilled in Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, inDesign, Acrobat) 
• Expert knowledge and highly skilled in Figma
• Expertise in presentation design and Google slides
• Comfortable working within brand guidelines and templates to keep marketing cohesive, on-brand, and consistent 
• Able to take direction and keep a consistent vision when creating work as a team and not an individual 
• Willingness to help and motivate junior teammates, while also taking advantage of learning opportunities from senior teammates 
• Deadline oriented and ability to self-manage timelines and schedules
• Excellent organizational skills and strong attention to detail
• Ability to work independently, as well as within a team
• Strong collaborator and ability to take feedback and implement it into work
• Capable of developing ideas, explaining concepts, and executing through design output
• Strong social and communication skills
• Hunger to learn and grow with an open mind to new concepts, ideas, and design theories 
• Portfolio required

Bonus Areas of Expertise: 

• Skills in Adobe After Effects and Premiere 
• Understanding of basic HTML  
• Experience using project management software, such as Asana
• Knowledge of social media creative and trends 

We value diversity of all kinds, and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace where we learn from each other. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people of all different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives.