Recruiting Trends, 2015-2016. 45th Edition. Brief 4: Hiring by Academic Degree
Author: Schlick, Stephanie, Ed.
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Recruitment,Personnel Selection,College Graduates,Intellectual Disciplines,Academic Degrees,Employment

The Collegiate Employment Research Institute (CERI) has broken the release of employer information into a series of short briefs that are a part of this series. This sample was generated from employers currently seeking college talent through their interactions with college and university career services offices. Nearly 200 career service centers from around the country invited their employers to participate in this study. More than 4,730 employers provided information useful for understanding recruiting trends and practices. Also included is information from respondents recruiting talent for full-time positions, internships, and co-ops. In an effort to streamline this year's survey an effort was made to see whether more meaningful insights on the state of hiring across academic majors could be gained. A long checklist of academic disciplines was not initially presented this year where respondents were then asked to select which majors they would recruit. Rather, this year's respondents were asked if they would be interested in hiring candidates from four broad categories: all academic majors, all business majors, all technical majors, and all majors from arts, communications, humanities, and social sciences. Second, respondents were asked to select specific majors if the comprehensive categories did not adequately describe the candidates they sought. These two steps mitigated the problem of respondents selecting all the possible majors even if they would not really consider hiring them. By focusing on fewer possible majors, respondents saw only the same set of majors when prompted to provide information on starting salaries. When the average number of hires in each broad category were examined, the highs and lows tended to follow organization size. Large companies were more likely to recruit across all majors, or all business, or all arts, communications, etc. Smaller companies were more likely to recruit, for example, all engineering or all technical majors. Thirty-one percent of recruiters seeking to fill full-time jobs expressed interest in candidates across all academic majors. The following are what understanding was gained from these survey results: (1) Employers recruiting Business, Computer Science, and Engineering majors are shaping the new college labor market to a greater extent than has been the case over several of the last few years. A more focused market may make it challenging for candidates from majors outside these groups. (2) Employers seeking Business and Computer Science talent cast a wider net to recruit majors from other academic disciplines than employers who focus on a different set of majors. (3) Employers seeking Engineering majors cast the smallest nets, capturing only a few if any other majors. Engineering firms tend to be small and more likely to recruit only engineers; therefore, smaller companies are more likely to shape engineering opportunities for new college graduates. Key findings from 2015-16 are presented in this research brief.