Using Machine Learning to Measure Job Skill Similarities

This project involved implementing machine learning methodologies to identify similarities in job skills contained in resumes. An organization presented the project to the New York City Data Science Academy to explore whether Academy students might be interested in working on it. The three authors of this post, all students at the Academy at the time, agreed to take the project on. In formulating the analysis described in this post, the authors collaborated with several representatives of the organization. While the organization has asked us to refrain from disclosing its name at this time, the authors wish to convey their gratitude to the organization for the opportunity to work on the project as part of our studies at the Academy. The general idea underlying this project was to uncover semantic similarity and relations behind skills that appear on resumes. A semantic-based approach to evaluating job skill similarity has many potential applications that flow from an understanding of the relationships between skills found in resumes. While there are certainly other approaches to identifying semantic connections between job skills, machine learning techniques create interesting and powerful possibilities.