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School Settings: Major Groups

Tawnya
  • Updated
Specific program and major names can vary from school to school, so to help employers avoid confusion when evaluating student qualifications across the network, Handshake uses Major Groups.
 
Each major group on Handshake’s list represents a relatively broad field of study (for example “architecture” or “advertising”) which typically incorporates a number of your institutional majors.
 
When employers post jobs or search for students, they have the opportunity to use either a major group, or specific majors. Typically employers will only select the major group because the postings can easily transfer between institutions on Handshake. In order for students with those majors to be shown as qualified, your list of major names must be mapped to these groups. 
 
Major Groups are not editable on a per-school basis. These lists were developed in cooperation with a number of our partner schools.

 

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

During implementation, you'll need to upload your core student data file. In the file you'll have a few required headers, one of those being "primary_education:major_names:" This student data import is what will populate your list of institution majors in Handshake. 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!
 

Major Mapping

Once your student data file has been uploaded, the Career Services team will need to map your majors. Things to keep in mind:
  • 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

You can map your majors from the Majors page in School Settings. 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!

 

Mapping your Majors

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. All Major Groups in Handshake will be listed on this page, divided into categories.

3. Click Map majors to groups button in the upper-right corner of the page.

Map

4. This brings in a side bar from the right side of the screen. A list of major categories are provided. Select the major group category that you’d like to modify.

 

Map

5. Choose the major group you want to map the major to.

Choose

 

6. Search for the major you plan to map to this major group. Select the major from the dropdown menu and click Save to proceed.

Selecting

Note: Individual majors may only be mapped to 3 major groups simultaneously.

 

Repeat Step 3 as needed for each Major Group.