Senior SEO Strategist at Handshake

Senior SEO Strategist

San Francisco, CA; Denver, CO; New York, NY; Austin, TX; Seattle, WA; Chicago, IL; Los Angeles, CA; Remote

We are thrilled to announce Handshake’s $200M Series F funding round. At Handshake, we believe that a career opportunity shouldn’t be determined by who you know or what you’ve done. It’s about what you can – and will – do. Your future, not your past. Our Series F fundraise and new valuation of $3.5B will fuel our next phase of growth and propel our mission to help more people start, restart, and jumpstart their careers.

Handshake is the #1 place to launch a career with no connections, experience, or luck required. Handshake’s community includes 20 million students and young alumni around the world from 1,400 educational institutions, including four-year colleges, community colleges, boot camps, and 290+ minority-serving institutions. The platform connects up-and-coming talent with 650,000+ employers – from Fortune 500 companies like Google, Nike, and Target to thousands of public school districts, healthcare systems, nonprofits, and even sports teams like the LA Dodgers. Handshake is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, New York, and London and teammates working globally.

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.

If you are not sure that you’re 100% qualified, but up for the challenge we want you to apply. We believe skills are transferable and passion for our mission goes a long way.

Your Impact:

Handshake seeks a savvy and experienced SEO strategist to lead organic channel growth. You will partner closely with cross-functional leaders in marketing ops, web dev, content, comms, product, engineering – and more – towards the goal of aligning and collectively rallying all these teams to make significant and measurable impact to Handshake’s organic footprint. You will build, prioritize and manage our SEO roadmap – balancing short-term improvements and long-term strategic initiatives to ensure we’re continually improving and are having the right resourcing/trade-off conversations along the way. You are curious and look for opportunities to make step-change organic impact in non-traditional ways that play to Handshake’s strengths. You will drive SEO reporting, helping to surface the right views in a regular drumbeat alongside key insights – contextualizing the ever-changing organic landscape and the impact that proactive SEO can make.

Your Role

• Lead SEO strategy and key cross-functional initiatives inclusive of technical SEO, content SEO, PR, and product
• Contribute to Handshake’s overall content strategy, including blogs, user-generated content, editorial content, and content created in-product such as job postings and events
• Contribute to Handshake’s overall marketing strategy, including digital, PR, brand advertising, and other areas that may affect SEO authority
• Contribute to Handshake’s overall product strategy, helping us to identify new product areas that offer SEO opportunities.
• Contribute to CRO strategy, identifying opportunities for relevant conversion
• Hold primary responsibility for localization and geofocused SEO rankings
• Advise product, marketing, and executive leadership about SEO issues and opportunities, regularly communicating about progress and impact of program

Your Experience:

• You have been (or are currently in!) a SEO, growth or digital marketing role at a fast paced consumer, marketplace, or media company and have seen multiple stages of growth in your career
• Experience with an in-house SEO operation or highly integrated agency relationship, working closely with marketing, product and engineering teams
• Familiarity with user generated content, content aggregation, and SEO at scale
• Left-brained / right-brained – you thrive equally with data and analytics as with creative problem solving and communicating strategy across multiple seniorities and technical / non-technical teams
• You are hands-on and enjoy building, even if you are an experienced manager
• Collaborative but also goal-oriented, you rally others around impact
• Comfortable with SEO KPIs and consistent reporting
• A constant learner, with deep knowledge of the SEO tech landscape and you keep your finger on the pulse of how it’s rapidly evolving
• You get really excited thinking about the impact you’ll make combining your highly cultivated skillset with the impact Handshake is making democratizing access to opportunity and demystifying how talent find their ideal careers, regardless of experience or networks

For cash compensation, we set standard ranges for all 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.

Benefits:

At Handshake, we’ll give you the tools to feel healthy, happy and secure.

• Stock: Ownership in a fast-growing company.
• Hub-Based Remote Work: Handshakers can enjoy the flexibility of remote work whilst ensuring in-person collaboration, and team experiences remain possible.
• Financial Management with Origin: We provide you with a professional financial planner via Origin to gain a better understanding of making the most of your compensation, equity, benefits, and perks.
• Paid Parental Leave: All new parents at Handshake (both birth and non-birth giving) are encouraged to take time to focus on their growing family and are eligible for paid family leave. US Handshakers are provided up to 16 weeks of paid family leave for birth-giving parents and 10 weeks for non-birth-giving parents.
• Mental Health Assistance: We are here to support you in every step of your mental health journey; our benefits include Employee Assistance Programs that offer counseling support for those eligible.
• Home Office Stipend: Handshake offers $500/360 for you to spend on setting up a productive and comfortable workspace at home.
• Learning: Learning & Development opportunities and an annual $2,000/1,500 stipend for you to grow your skills and career.
• Team Bonding: Regularly scheduled virtual company-wide and team events! Once it’s safe, we’ll provide meaningful connection points throughout the year for Handshakers to build community and meet teammates in person.
• Great team: Working with fun, hardworking, nice people who are committed to making a difference!

(US Handshakers)

• 401k: We care about your ability to save for your future. Launching Spring 2022, Handshake will offer a dollar-for-dollar match on 1% of deferred salary, up to a maximum of $1,200 per year.
• Healthcare: World-class medical, dental, and vision policies including LGTBQ+ Coverage.
• 2022 Time Off: All full-time US-based Handshakers are eligible for our flexible time off policy to get out and see the world. We also offer 8 standardized holidays, 2 additional days of flexible holiday time off, and 2 one-week periods of Collective Time Off (7/4-7/8/2022) and (12/26-12/30/2022).

(UK Handshakers)

• Pension: Handshake matches 3% of your salary towards your pension scheme.
• Healthcare: Handshake’s comprehensive healthcare policy covers 100% of employee premiums & 100% of dependent premiums for medical, dental, and vision benefits.
• 2022 Time Off: Up to 25 days of vacation to encourage people to reset, recharge, and refresh, in addition to 8 bank holidays throughout the year.

Benefits above apply to employees in full-time positions.