Job recommendation algorithm for graduates based on personalized preference

Abstract

It is challenging for graduates to find a proper job. Unlike those with occupational history, graduates generally are short of work experience and the support from social network, so they have to face hundreds of recruitment companies. The process of applying for a job is time-consuming, especially in preparing and attending tests and interviews. Not knowing which companies are most proper for them, graduates need to devote their energy and time to preparing for each potential recruitment. This job-hunting strategy can easily lead to employment dissatisfaction or failure. Therefore, it is very helpful to recommend a few most suitable jobs to graduates. Collaborative filtering (CF) method is currently the most frequently adopted and effective recommendation algorithm, but it cannot be directly applied to job recommendation for graduates because graduates generally have no historical records on employment. Besides, job recommendation should take into account graduate preferences for jobs, such as enterprise types and company locations, which are crucial to job choices. To address these challenges, we first analyze the pattern of job choices of graduates. Based on this, we propose a personalized preference collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm (P2CF), which can not only recommend jobs for graduates through massive campus records, but also identify graduate personal preferences for jobs. Graduates are first clustered into different groups according to their academic performances and family economic conditions. Then Bayesian personalized ranking (BPR) method is introduced to calculate the scores of graduate groups to jobs. Finally the scores and graduate personalized preferences are combined to recommend a few potential jobs. P2CF is a recommendation algorithm with hierarchical structure, which takes account of both the group records of job choices and the individual preferences for jobs. Experimental results show that P2CF on job recommendation outperforms state-of-the-art CF methods and identifies graduate personalized preference for jobs accurately.