Are college majors becoming a thing of the past? was originally published on College Recruiter.
Many colleges seem to be encouraging multidisciplinary concentrations and combinations of minors. Some institutions are phasing out the strict adherence to picking one single major. But why?
Until very recently, very, very few employers who hired more than a handful of people a year really knew where their applicants were coming from, let alone their hires let alone their most productive employees. Over the past couple of years, however, a rapidly increasing minority of medium- and large-employers are not just claiming to use data to drive their hiring decisions but are actually doing so. And some of these employers are using workforce productivity data instead of cost-per-application or cost-per-hire data to drive the decisions as to where to source their candidates.
What many of these employers are finding is that their most productive employees did not come from the sources that the employers always took for granted were their best sources of hire. Employers who hire a lot of interns and recent grads, for example, typically chased after the candidates with the most sought after majors and who were enrolled at the most elite schools. These candidates, however, rarely stay with an employer longer than for a couple of years, whereas candidates from less sexy majors, schools, or both tend to stay for five, 10, or even more years and that makes them far more productive.
