Job seeker to vacancy matching using social network analysis

Social network analysis is the investigation of social structures by using methods such as graph theory and machine learning. Social networks characterize networked structures in terms of nodes (i.e., individuals) and their relationships to each other as acquaintances, colleagues, collaborators and/or classmates. Through these relationships, one can find their ties with their connections, professions, and the degree of the ties. Networking sites such as LinkedIn® and Researchgate® also contain more information of the knowledge of connections about the skill of an individual. The purpose of this study is to identify methods that measure the skills, expertise and experience of a job seeker and to investigate importance of using social networking data as input to user modeling that determines the strength of skills to be used for recommending matching job vacancies. Result of preliminary experiment using social network data in skill measurement shows consistent improvement in accuracy of matching job seekers to vacancies.