<p>For those of you who are recruiters, do you care about minors when you look at a resume?</p>
<p>regardless if it’s a recent grad applying to an entry level job or a senior position.</p>
<p>I’ve hired a few people in a previous life - the answer is ‘it depends’. If the job is specialized on one specific thing, minors are not important; if the job involves multiple functional areas, it is more important.</p>
<p>Classic example - a vanilla flavor software engineer graduate versus the same one with a minor in, say, computer engineering. The second candidate is likely to know what color the positive terminal is (black, right? :-)) and how to connect the scope to check a signal out.</p>
<p>If they’re both applying for software only jobs, the minor won’t matter much. But if they’re both applying for a job that involves some hardware, the second one has an advantage.</p>
<p>If we’re talking esoteric minors, now, that’s another thing - I know engineers with minor in Japanese language… awesome combination. So it really depends on the specifics.</p>
<p>Experience from my own office, when we are thinking about who to call in for an interview -
For a senior position we wouldn’t look at undergrad minor at all but when we are considering a recent grad, we notice if there is an interesting minor or double major.</p>
<p>Only when it adds a significant boost (and most don’t). So majoring in Renaissance Studies with a minor in Econ is a plus; (quant skills, intellectual versatility); majoring in Anthropology with a minor in Latin American studies not so much. (Although it’s a nice signal that the person is probably fluent in Spanish. But you get the same kick from writing “fluent in Spanish”.) Majoring in anything quant with a minor in something artistic or visual is always a plus, but again, you don’t need a minor to demonstrate significant interest or skills in musical composition, performance, or printmaking.</p>
<p>In my field…only if it will provide something that will add to the job…and only for NEW hires out of college.</p>
<p>It gets noticed when it’s specifically relevant, really different (we don’t get a lot of hard science minors in the law firms I’ve been involved with), and particularly when there’s some reference to the applicant having kept current with trends in that field.</p>
<p>Language minors not at all. We would want to know if you are fluent in another language, not whether you took a bunch of courses.</p>
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<p>in what capacity?</p>
<p>^ I think what they mean is that, for example if you majored in Dance and minored in Computer Science (I knew someone who did this who ended up being recruited by Google), you would need to show that you had mastery of the latest trends in Computer Science and not just a basic grasp of HTML. You could demonstrate this maybe by taking an exam for an advanced certificate in computer science and listing that on your resume, or by participating in summer programs that teach specific advanced topics. </p>
<p>I’m not a recruiter, but I have been a job applicant, and I think basically it comes down to whether the person doing the hiring believes your major gives you a skill that you can operationalize when they hire you. If you’re applying to be a paralegal, they’re not going to care very much about your minor in Renaissance Studies.</p>
<p>Not sure I agree with mini. I sometimes need people to do some cursory review of documents in other languages, and they don’t need to be fully fluent / able to speak it perfectly to do this review. Whether it’s “minor in Spanish” or “fluent in conversational Spanish” is rather irrelevant to me.</p>
<p>It depends a lot on the major and the minor and the need. A B.S. in geography with a minor in C.S. could be very, very attractive to companies engaged with GIS, much more so that just a vanilla Geography degree. Sometimes the minor just serves to make the candidate look more interesting, and that’s not a bad thing either. I can’t see that a minor would ever hurt. OTOH, I wouldn’t try to accumulate multiple minors, particularly in closely related fields.</p>
<p>Doesn’t really matter what your minor, or major, is to me. I ask to see a transcript and I look over the STEM classes (this would be for an engineering job) and how well you did. I would be paying particular attention to those that would be directly relavent to the needs of the position. This would be for a college hire or someone not too far out of school.</p>
<p>For someone with a fair amount of experience, I’m looking at your experience and not so much your college record.</p>
<p>So, if you “majored” in engineering and “minored” in music, it would only come up if I needed someone to entertain the group at the company picnic.</p>