MASc Thesis Seminar - Shivangi Chopra

Job description mining to understand the undergraduate co-operative market

Supervisor(s): Lukasz Golab

Abstract

Co-operative education has become popular worldwide. In this thesis, we use a text mining methodology to analyze over 17,000 co-op job postings in order to understand the co-op market trends in a large post-secondary institution. First, we develop a parser that extracts informative terms from freetext job descriptions. These terms include soft skills, technical skills as well as perks and indicators of company culture. Second, we group the job descriptions by discipline and academic year and analyze the differences between various segments of the co-op market. We obtain actionable insight that can benefit students, employers and the institution.