Please note: Your list of majors will be populated by your student import. Do NOT manually add majors to your school instance until your student file has been uploaded and finalized.
Note for Community Colleges:
We added 25 major groups in 2020 to incorporate Community and Technical College areas of study (Technician roles, Manufacturing and Production, Medical Assisting Services, and more), allowing employers to more easily target job postings to students with specific skill sets.
We highly encourage all community college partners to transition your majors to the new major groups. Refer to “How to Map Your Majors” below for a review on how to edit your major groups. Please reach out to the Handshake Support Team should you need assistance.
If you’d like to communicate the change directly to your employers, here is an email template you can send to encourage employers to update their existing job postings to the new major groups.
How to Upload your Institution Majors
Major Mapping
- Student Profile: Your custom institution majors (those imported in the student data upload) will always display on the student profile. Employers can see this name when reviewing their application) - the major groups are just the backend qualifications.
- 1:1 Matching: You can map your institutional majors to up to 3 different major groups - this will ensure that if there isn't an exact 1:1 matching, students will be qualified for a variety of roles in related fields. Outside of this, Handshake limits mapping each major to 3 major groups in order to keep our search and recommendation algorithms relevant for both students and employers. If we were to increase this threshold, students would technically qualify for all jobs, yet they would be at a disadvantage (and not populate) in employer searches and filters.
How to Map Your Majors
There are two options for mapping - either from the Majors page OR the Major Groups page. Either way, you'll want to start with a pre-populated list of majors from your student data import. Please do not manually add your list of majors. This is to ensure that both only majors actively used by students are used and proper student linking (vs a misspelling or an extra space added), as this can cause complications for student major qualifications in any area of Handshake!
Map from the Major Group page
1. Click on your name in the upper-right corner of the Handshake screen, then click School Settings.
2. From the left menu on that page, click Major Groups. All Major Groups in Handshake will be listed on this page, divided into categories.
3. Click the name of the Major Group you'd like to edit, then click Edit Majors.
4. A list of all majors at your school will popup.
- Check the box for a particular major to map to this particular Major Group in Handshake.
- Uncheck a checked box to remove the major from the selected major group.
Note: Individual majors may only be mapped to 3 major groups max simultaneously.
5. Click Save in the lower-right corner of the popup to save mapping changes.
Repeat Step 4 as needed for each Major Group.
Map from the Major page
1. Click on your name in the upper-right corner of the Handshake screen, then click School Settings.
2. From the left menu on that page, click Majors. Majors that have been added for your school will be listed on this page alphabetically.
3. Click the name of the Major you'd like to assign to a Major Group.
If you accidentally click the X to the far right in the row, a prompt will appear to confirm or cancel the major deletion. Select Keep this Major to cancel the deletion or click Delete this Major to proceed with deletion.
4. A popup will load with a full list of Major Groups in Handshake, organized by category. The name of the major you clicked on will be at the very top of the popup.
- Check the box(es) of the Major Group to add the current major to this group.
- Note: Majors may only be mapped to 3 major groups at a time!
- Uncheck a presently checked box to remove the major from the selected group.
5. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, then click Save in the lower-right corner of the popup to save your changes.
Repeat Step 4 as needed for each Major.
Comments
2 comments
We uploaded our student file, but majors don't appear on the pages listed above. What should we do?
Hi Dannon! Can you reach out to our support team so we can review your student file? It's possible that the file was not formatted correctly.
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