[T]he college system has created a software package designed to narrow the so-called skills gap. Part of that gap, the developers believe, is due to colleges, employers, and students using different terms to describe the same skills. That leads to misunderstanding and frustration among both job seekers and recruiters, who frequently complain that they can’t find people with the skills they need.[1]But why should Texas State Technical College students have all the fun? It's no secret that fewer and fewer of us, percentage-wise, will ever achieve tenure-track employment.
As far as I know, no one has yet suggested using the Skills Engine to jump-start an alt-ac career (don't thank me, just cite me). What happens when you take the CV of a high profile humanities scholar and feed it into the Skills Engine?
How about a political science CV? (I just grabbed these off the internet. Both are from tenure-track faculty in R1 institutions in the U.S.)
Now we're getting somewhere. Community & Social Service Specialists and PR Managers look like a real alternative to postsecondary teaching.
And of course I had to try my own CV. I'm happily tenured, but things change. What if I slip up in class and accidentally use curse words or tell a sexually-themed joke? What other jobs could I do?
There you go! Managers, All Other. Career Goal: Put me in charge of stuff.
You can try the Skills Engine here.
[1] The article gives one example of how this software was used: An employer was advertising a position for $15/hour when the going rate for a qualified worker was $22. In fact the "skills gap" appears to be mostly a result of employers not wanting to shell out for salaries or training.
[2] Is "Alt-Ac" simply the new "entrepreneurship," a way to ignore structural issues in the job market and place the responsibility on the individual? Discuss.
Here is for a biology instructor.
ReplyDelete"SkillsEngine™ analyzed your data and detected the following occupations. We also pulled in employment data specific to the selected state. You can use this information to help individuals make career decisions, educators target occupations, and industries find the right talent across resumes.
Biological Science Teacher, Postsecondary
78%
Match
Biological Technicians
73%
Match
Secondary School Teacher, Ex Special & CTE
61%
Match
Vocational Education Teachers, Post H.S.
61%
Match"
Guess I should keep applying for all those jobs out there.
Nonfarm Animal Caretakers
ReplyDelete66% Match
Veterinary Assist & Lab Animal Caretakers
66% Match
Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists
66% Match
Veterinarians
62% Match
* Information based on the Department of Labor data for the entite U.S.
I should mention that for the CV, as job skills I put in
Delete* Herding cats
* Kissing asses
* Training puppies
* Walking on eggshells
and a few other things in a similar vein I no longer remember.
Starting with the input text
ReplyDeleteNeutrino roper. Build, maintain and operate neutrino detector systems based on scintillator or cryogenic TPCs. Reduce and analyze data from neutrino experiments, identify and characterize backgrounds, extract signal.
Byte wrangler. General coder with experience in distributed and cooperative development environments. Experience in C, C++, Fortran. Some familiarity with relational databases.
Vice president in charge of bottle washing. Maintain basic laboratory equipment. Inventory and order consumables. Supervise adherence to safety guidelines and regulation. Write operations documentation. General gofer.
it returns:
Maintenance and Repair Workers, General
53% Match
Computer Programmers
50% Match
Biological Technicians
49% Match
Database Administrators
48% Match
That tells me two thing. First that it uses a keyword based analysis with no natural language processing to speak of. There is probably a clustering analysis of their overall data set behind it, but it is useless for jobs that are not represented by many entries in the database. Second, that I may actually be qualified for one of my in-case-acedamia-falls-through backup plans.