Employers have increased their hiring projections for this year's graduating college class as they are now planning to hire 9.6 percent more new college graduates from the class of 2015 for their U.S. operations than they did from the class of 2014, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers' "Job Outlook 2015 Spring Update."
In the "Job Outlook 2015" survey administered last November, responding employers reported they plan to hire 8.3 percent more college graduates this year than they did in 2014. Additionally, more than 55 percent of respondents are planning to increase their individual hiring numbers, a 9 percent increase from the November survey.
The NACE survey asked employers to rate the academic disciplines they are seeking for the college graduate hires. According to Forbes, most employers (72 percent) identified engineering degrees, following by business (68 percent) and computer science (58 percent). The majors employers rated the lowest included health sciences, education, agriculture and the humanities. Only 11 percent of respondents indicated they would hire graduates with degrees in the humanities, and just over 10 percent said they would hire social sciences majors.
Employers named critical thinking and problem solving as the skills they value most in new hires, followed by teamwork, professionalism and work ethic, oral and written communication, information technology application, leadership and career management.
According to Forbes, the NACE survey was completed by large companies such as DuPont, General Electric and KPMG — nonprofits, arts organizations and publishers were not included on the list.