Soft and hard skills identification: insights from IT job advertisements in the CIS region

Abstract

Labor market transformations significantly affect the sphere of information technologies (IT) introducing new instruments, architectures, and frameworks. Employers operate with new knowledge domains which demand specific competencies from workers including combinations of both technical (“hard”) and non-technical (“soft”) skills. The educational system is now required to provide the alumni with up-to-date skill sets covering the latest labor market trends. However, there is a big concern about the self-adaptation of educational programs for meeting the companies’ needs. Accordingly, frequent changes in job position requirements call for the tool for in-time categorization of vacancies and skills extraction. This study aims to show the demand for skills in the IT sphere in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region and discover the mapping between required skill sets and job occupations. The proposed methodology for skills identification uses natural language processing, hierarchical clustering, and association mining techniques. The results reveal explicit information about the combinations of “soft” and “hard” skills required for different professional groups. These findings provide valuable insights for supporting educational organizations, human resource (HR) specialists, and state labor authorities in the renewal of existing knowledge about skill sets for IT professionals. In addition, the provided methodology for labor market monitoring has a high potential to ensure effective matching of employees.

Leveraging Online Job Portal Data in Asia and the Pacific

“…OJV analysis can reveal which skills are in demand, whether that demand is growing or declining over time, and which skills are likely to fetch higher remuneration for the worker (Xu et al 2017, ADB andLinkedIn 2022). OJV analysis can also contribute to mapping skills to occupations (Giabelli et al 2020) as well as identify sector-or industry-specific skills at various levels of granularity (Messum et al 2011, Ternikov 2022. Further, OJV data can be used to improve automated job recommendations, enhance skills development curricula, and assist in talent search (Khaouja, Kassou, and Ghogho 2021;Fabo and Mýtna Kureková 2022).…”

Analyzing Big Data Professionals: Cultivating Holistic Skills Through University Education and Market Demands

“…Through in-depth mining and analysis of data on job recruitment websites, the market's demand for big data talent shows the need for skills in multiple domains. Simultaneously, employers have raised higher expectations for these professionals, requiring them to possess not only rich 'hard skills' but also excel in 'soft skills' [34]. The balance between these hard and soft skills is crucial; big data professionals need to excel in key technical skills such as data processing and analysis, while actively developing soft skills such as teamwork, communication, and leadership [35].…”

What about data science? An analysis of the market based on Job posts

“…Como indicac ¸ão de trabalho futuro tem-se o estudo de estratégias/métodos para melhorar a interpretac ¸ão dos tópicos. [Ternikov 2022] evidenciou a demanda para habilidades na esfera de Tecnologia da Informac ¸ão na região da Comunidade de Estados Independentes, realizando o mapeamento entre os conjuntos de habilidades necessárias e as ocupac ¸ões de trabalho. Para identificac ¸ão de habilidades foram usados processamento de linguagem natural, agrupamento hierárquico e regras de associac ¸ão.…”