States of Handshake: Standout Skills
As a continuation of our States of Handshake series, we take a look at student skills state-by-state.
By Kelsey Donohue | Communications at Handshake
As the winter melts away from college quads, students are slowly emerging from their mid-term haze and shifting gears to focus on landing that coveted summer internship or post-grad job.
This likely means, somewhere across America, you’ll find a student quickly adding “Leadership,” “Communication,” or “Proficient in Microsoft Office” to the skills section of their Handshake profile. As you can see from the map below, these three skills were the most popular coast-to-coast across the Handshake community of 9.4 million students and young alumni. So if you need a future CEO who can make a good Powerpoint deck, we’ve got you covered!
While we may joke about how prevalent these skills are on Handshake profiles, students who showcase these skills are more likely to catch the attention of employers. According to a 2017 National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) survey, employers are searching for students who have demonstrated leadership and have proven to be team players and good communicators.
As we kick-off our next chapter in the States of Handshake series, we take a deeper dive beyond “leadership” and explore the more distinct skills we see popping up state-by-state. These distinct skills were significantly more popular among Handshake students in the specific state than in other states.
- Where can you find more creative students? Tennessee, home to the Music City of Nashville, is packed with students skilled in “Songwriting”, of course!
- Where are the country’s future aerospace engineers? Florida, home to Cape Canaveral and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, naturally.
- You’re hungry for a great croissant. Where can you fly to find the best pastry chefs? Where else but…Rhode Island!
Keep reading to learn more about these skills from coast-to-coast.
Tennessee: Songwriting
True to Tennessee’s country music roots and claim to fame as home of Dollywood and the Grand Ole Opry, songwriting is the most uniquely popular skill among students in the state. Just over 10 years ago, the Belmont University Curb School of Entertainment and Music Business pioneered one of the first specialized majors in Songwriting, and today Belmont students walk the same halls as the lyricists for Carrie Underwood and Tim McGraw. And, as we discovered during the States of Handshake post on Top Employers Coast to Coast, Nashville’s Warner Music Group is the top employer among Tennessee students. Many students hope to land a role at the leading music group, which reps country music stars like Blake Shelton and Kenny Chesney.
Rhode Island: Pastry
Home to the coveted Johnson & Wales’ College of Culinary Arts, it’s no surprise that you’ll likely find the next Top Chef in Rhode Island. With a degree in Baking & Pastry Arts, students build the skills needed to master dessert staples like sugar works, chocolate showpieces, and wedding cakes. Johnson & Wales is credited with fueling the booming food culture in Providence. With students interning in the local community for college credit, young chefs are gaining hands-on experience and networking with top chefs — many Johnson & Wales’ alums themselves! If you’re searching for the next Food Network star, look no further than Rhode Island.
Florida: Aerospace Engineering
3…2…1…blast off! With NASA’s famous Kennedy Space Center located at Cape Canaveral in Florida, future aerospace engineers flock to the Sunshine State to gain hands-on experience with the Florida Space Institute, which combines the expertise of researchers, faculty, and students from universities across Florida. Employers like NASA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, GE, Harris Corporation and Northrop Grumman look to Florida to recruit aerospace engineers from the campuses of Florida Institute of Technology and University of Central Florida. Fun Fact: On April 7, 2007, Florida Institute of Technology alum Sunita Williams completed the Boston Marathon while orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Delaware: Fashion Merchandising
While New York or Los Angeles may be the first places that come to mind when you think of the fashion industry, Delaware shouldn’t be overlooked. University of Delaware’s fashion merchandising program attracts students from across the country looking to get a head start as an apparel merchandiser at Urban Outfitters or Under Armour. At U-Del, students build a strong foundation in business layered with classes specific to the apparel and fashion industry, developing a wide range of skills like retail math, textiles product development and consumer behavior. Top designers like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klien have leveraged U-Del alums to create strong recruiting pipelines to help students get their start in the fashion industry.
Pennsylvania: Bloomberg Certified
Bloomberg’s flashing stock tickers, dual-screen monitors and expensive financial software programs have become staples on Wall Street. And now they’re standard in the investment labs at many leading business schools, like the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and Villanova University, where you can become Bloomberg Certified. Villanova was one of the first business schools in the country to require all business students to gain proficiency of the Bloomberg Terminal. This certification gives a stamp of approval for future employers searching for financial analysts. Villanova first opened its Applied Finance Lab in 2005 with one Bloomberg Terminal and quickly rose to be one of the Top Five U.S. universities for students obtaining Bloomberg certification. University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business is home to more than 25 Bloomberg Terminals, offering a variety of e-courses to help students get up to speed on the ins and outs of the terminal.
Skills State-by-State
Keep reading to learn more about the most unique skill in every state across the country.
Alabama: Environmental Sciences is an interdisciplinary degree formed from a combination of courses in the natural and life sciences.
Alaska: The Personal Fitness Assessment (PFA) is a combination of tests that provide a basic assessment of each of the fitness components for students studying health and physical education.
Arizona: Prolog is a general-purpose logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.
Arkansas: Industrial Engineering is often called “big picture” engineering, because it looks at systems as a whole and come up with ways to improve them.
California: A Storage Area Network (SAN) is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block level data storage.
Colorado: Investment Analysis, defined as the process of evaluating an investment for profitability and risk, ultimately has the purpose of measuring how a given investment is a good fit for a portfolio
Connecticut: Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary curriculum combines the principles of both biological and psychological science from molecules to human and animal behavior to ecosystems.
Delaware: Fashion Merchandising students study fashion management relative to planning, development, sourcing, distribution, and communication of fashion products in the global environment.
District of Columbia: Public Affairs combines government relations, communications, and social responsibility to influence public policy and engage a wide-range of stakeholders — from politicians to citizens.
Florida: Aerospace Engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft.
Georgia: Business Process Management is a discipline in operations management that uses various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes.
Hawaii: Business Management students receive a broad educational experience that is relevant areas in like the private or public sector, self-employment and entrepreneurship.
Idaho: Exercise Physiology is the physiology of physical exercise and acute responses and chronic adaptations to a wide range of exercise conditions.
Illinois: A Certified Nursing Assistant’s (CNA) main role is to provide basic care to patients, as well as assist them in daily activities they might have trouble with on their own
Indiana: Haskell is a standardized, general-purpose purely functional programming language. Haskell is highly regarded for its ability to transform the way developers think about programming.
Iowa: Mathcad was first introduced in 1986 and was the first to introduce live editing of typeset mathematical notation, combined with its automatic computations.
Kansas: CATIA is a multi-platform software suite for computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacturing, computer-aided engineering,
Kentucky: Physical Assessment allows nurses to obtain descriptions about patient’s symptoms, how the symptoms developed, and to discover any associated physical findings that will aid in the development of differential diagnoses.
Louisiana: Public Health is the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting human health. Graduates work in a wide variety of settings, roles at every level in community health agencies on the municipal, state, and federal level.
Maine: Financial Market is a broad term describing any marketplace where trading of securities including equities, bonds, currencies and derivatives occurs.
Maryland: Business Writing refers to memorandums, reports, proposals, emails, and other forms of writing used in organizations to communicate with internal or external audiences.
Massachusetts: Esprit is a software that provides the powerful programming solutions for machining application, most commonly used in factories and heavy manufacturing industries.
Michigan: CATIA stands for Computer Aided Three dimensional Interactive Application and was first released in 1977 to design the Dassault Mirage fighter jet.
Minnesota: Certified Nursing Assistant is the first stage to becoming a Registered Nurse.
Mississippi: Financial Analysts provide guidance to businesses and assess the performance of stocks, bonds, and other types of investments.
Missouri: Safety Management works to reduce risks of workplace incidents, injuries and fatalities through data-driven measurements and improvements.
Montana: Creativity was among the top skills valued by employers as found in the 2015 World Economic Survey.
Nebraska: Strength and Conditioning is a core program at University of Nebraska that teaches a systematic approach to help athletes achieve their goals.
Nevada: Medical terminology is the language used to precisely describe the human body including its components, processes, conditions affecting it, and procedures performed upon it.
New Hampshire: Not statistically significant data.
New Jersey: Titration, also known as titrimetry, is a common laboratory method of quantitative chemical analysis that is used to determine the unknown concentration of an identified analyte.
New Mexico: Petroleum Engineering is a field of engineering concerned with the activities related to the production of hydrocarbons, which can be either crude oil or natural gas.
New York: Java is a general-purpose computer-programming language that is specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible.
North Carolina: TypeScript is an open-source programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft.
North Dakota: Not statistically significant data.
Ohio: Interactive Media consists of a wide-range of multimedia — text, moving image, animation, video, audio, and video games.
Oklahoma: Reservoir Engineering is a branch of petroleum engineering that applies scientific principles to the drainage problems arising during the development and production of oil and gas reservoirs.
Oregon: Logistics Management is the part of supply chain management that plans, implements, and controls the flow and storage of goods and services to meet the needs of consumers.
Pennsylvania: Bloomberg Certified is the marker of proficiency in Bloomberg’s computer software system that enables financial professionals to monitor and analyze real-time financial market data and place trades.
Rhode Island: Pastry encompases the skills needed to master dessert staples like sugar works, chocolate showpieces, and wedding cakes.
South Carolina: Typescript was released in 2012 by Microsoft as an open-source programming language that serves as a superset of JavaScript.
South Dakota: Social Media Management oversees the monitoring and content creation for social media platforms of a brand, product, individual or corporation.
Tennessee: Songwriting intertwines musical talent, creativity, and writing to produce melodies and lyrics.
Texas: Strength & Conditioning is the study of human performance to maximize an athlete’s physical qualities and minimize injuries.
Utah: Linear Dynamic Systems is a version of a dynamical system, a mathematical function that describes the time dependence of a point in a geometrical space.
Vermont: Geographic Information System (GIS) is a framework for gathering, managing, and analyzing data to discover deeper insights to help users make smarter decisions.
Virginia: x86 assembly is the generic name for Intel processors. X86 microprocessors are capable of running in almost any type of computer, ranging from supercomputers to desktops, servers and laptops.
Washington: Construction Management is a professional service that uses specialized, project management techniques to oversee the planning, design, and construction of a project, from its beginning to its end.
West Virginia: Operations is a skill that involves overseeing the production of goods and ensuring a smooth efficient service that meets the expectations and needs of customers and clients.
Wisconsin: Nursing Assistants typically aim for roles at nursing homes, home care, assisted living, Hospice, hospitals, correctional institutions, and other long-term care settings.
Wyoming: Petroleum Engineering explores and develops methods for extracting oil and gas from deposits below the Earth’s surface.
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