Modeling a Competence-based Industry Role Selection System for University Graduates Using Machine Learning

Abstract

This paper presents a design of a system for industry role selection, representing both its structure and behavior. Knowing the right industry role that suits a graduate based on their competences on graduation has remained a critical matter for graduates when searching for jobs after graduation. Thousands of university students graduate each year and enter the market to search for jobs that are limited. Searching without prior information on the most appropriate industry role one is suitable for leads to blind search. Blind search not only puts graduates at risk of long-term unemployment and job mismatch but also overloads employers with many applications during job selection. Therefore, this paper addresses 2 objectives: 1) to model the system’s structure, and 2) to design the algorithm for the system’s behavior. Since object-oriented programming is currently the dominant programming paradigm, object modeling technique was selected to model both the system’s structure and the algorithm for the system’s behavior. To realize object modeling and represent the system’s artifacts in a highly simplified form, Unified Modeling Language (UML) was adopted as the standard modeling toolkit. More specifically, UML class diagram was used to represent the structural model of the system where the underlying objects of the model were exactly similar to those of the problem domain. Finally, use case diagram of the UML toolkit was used to represent the system’s behavior in selecting industry role for graduates. To ensure that the system improves performance of its behavior through experience in selecting industry roles for graduates, Machine Learning (ML) algorithm was designed. Two machine learning techniques, naïve Bayes and Support Vector Machines (SVM), were used as the algorithm’s criteria for selecting industry roles for graduates. Experiments to evaluate performance of the system were conducted using data collected from Software Engineering industry domain. The end product was design of an intelligent industry role selection system with relevant structure and behavior to easily work with both in the academia and industry. Findings reveal the system improves performance of its behavior in selecting industry roles for graduates much better under SVM (67%) than naïve Bayes (57%). On the same benchmark dataset, the system recorded better performance (85%) than reported performance (82%) in the benchmark system. These findings will benefit industry by getting evaluation tool for revealing graduate’s suitability for employment which they can use as prior information for decision making when filtering candidates for interview. Besides, this will provide researchers with a digital platform to study and bridge the gap between industry and academia. Lastly, this will attempt to reduce both low job satisfaction and long-term unemployment that is one of the causes of social and economic pain both in Kenya and around the world. This paper has revealed competence based industry role selection system with relevant structure and behavior can improve searching of jobs by providing a fairly accurate prior information. However, this paper recommends testing this approach with other alternative machine learning techniques as well as other alternative industry domains.