An internship matters more than a major for a graduate's odds of landing a good job. Brandon Busteed has the data to back that up.

Brandon is the CEO of Edconic and the former leader of Gallup's education and workforce practice. He helped build the Gallup-Purdue Index, a study of more than 100,000 college graduates that asked a question rankings still dodge: which college experiences actually lead to a good job and a good life?

In this episode, Brandon joins Rod Danan to explain the six experiences that double the odds of workplace engagement and wellbeing, why fewer than 3 percent of graduates report having all six, and why a university does not need an elite brand or a giant endowment to compete.

They also get into LinkedIn's hidden university ranking, the shortage of internships, why paid work is not automatically work-integrated learning, and the uncomfortable truth about Ivy League graduates ending up in business development without ever being taught sales.

Chapters

00:00 The Gallup-Purdue question

03:30 Why one university cannot grade itself

11:46 The six experiences that change outcomes

20:18 What a good college outcome actually is

27:04 Why not all work counts as learning

32:05 Career cannot live in an isolated office

35:07 LinkedIn's hidden university ranking

40:33 The job Ivy League graduates end up doing

42:22 The internship supply problem

48:36 Why internships beat majors

50:20 College's local value proposition

54:18 Quick fire and High Point University

Getting students hired is the cheapest retention lever a school has, and almost nobody pulls it. The Unpulled Lever talks to the leaders who can help us learn why and how to fix it.

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