Abstract:

The demands of the Canadian workforce are undergoing profound change, accelerated in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the skills required of recent graduates are not necessarily the same as those of graduates of the past. Further, the skills being taught in post-secondary education may not be keeping pace with the demands of industry. For example, a 2018 study conducted by the Royal Bank of Canada that sought the input of students and early career employees, as well as educators, employers, and policymakers, found that too many people have been trained with skills that no longer align with the demands of employers. Hence, it is necessary to rethink how we educate and equip students with skills that will allow them to succeed in the future skills economy.

To investigate how skills required of recent graduates have changed over time, this project will review more than 30,000 job descriptions from an online repository of job postings for both full-time and cooperative education roles at a medium-sized university in Ontario, Canada. Technical skills are extracted from job postings using natural language processing. Job postings, labelled by discipline, are analyzed to identify how technical skills requirements have changed over time, and which skills stand out as most in demand by discipline. Specifically, text analysis is conducted using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) to extract keywords from job descriptions and report on technical skills employers are most interested in.

Findings from this work can help gauge if university curriculum is in line with job market expectations, and how university courses might evolve to increase the employability of students for cooperative education positions as well as full-time post-graduate roles. Additionally, the findings can help identify how job descriptions might be better framed to highlight required skills by including keywords that are representative of employer expectations and day-to-day work.

Keywords:

Natural Language Processing, Technical Job Skills.