Abstract:

Today information technology (IT) is one of the most actively developing industries. Many employers, regardless of the type of their activities, have staff who work in the area of information technology. Thus, employers have a need for personnel in this field, which they search for by placing job advertisements. One of the sources of filling such vacant positions are graduates of universities of IT programs. It should be noted that the demand for IT specialists is very high all over the World; therefore, a wide choice of relevant professions opens for IT job seekers.

For IT graduates there are a number of questions arising in the process of employment. One of the most important is the choice of an employer with suitable salary and working conditions. To help job seekers in making decisions it would be valuable to elaborate a methodology to classify IT employers. This methodology should be tested in terms of specific regions, since the IT job market in different regions has its own characteristics that are not fully understood.

The article is dedicated to the methodology of classification of IT employers depending on offered vacancies, wage level, required competences and working conditions and testing of this methodology analyzing job offers of employers in the North-West of Russia. The offered methodology is based on creation of software system written in Python which automatically collects data about vacancies from job advertisement websites, then formalizes text values, transferring it to numerical codes. The received tables are analyzed with methods of the cluster analysis in the suitable software environment. Results of the analysis are interpreted by the expert.

The described methodology is applied to the analysis of IT employers in the North-West of Russia. As an example we built a framework which formalizes data from such job websites as HeadHunter.ru and Freelance.ru. The received numerical tables are analyzed with methods of the cluster analysis which are a part of Analysis Services of MS SQL Server. As a result various categories of employers are marked out in dependences on the characteristics considered at a clustering. Results of the cluster analysis allow to assume some regular characteristics of this particular labor market. So, employers whose field of business is not connected to IT, as a rule, demand skilled experts and at the same time pay quite a lot, on the other hand employers from the IT sphere pay less, but are less demanding to work experience, giving employees opportunities of additional training in the workplace.

Analysis and classification of employers in the North-West of Russia will provide new knowledge that can be used by job seekers when deciding on employment. Proposed in the paper methodology of analysis can be applied in different regions. In addition, the results of the analysis of identified competencies, which are really in demand by employers, can be used to update the curricula of the relevant bachelor and master programs.

Keywords:

Job Advertisement, Cluster analysis, Information technology, Labor Market, Employers, Classification.