5th OJA Forum: How can online job advertisements help to predict the demand for skills? – Part 1

Learning new skills is important to succeed in the job market. But which skills should employees focus on? Are some skills more important than others? And how can this be predicted? International experts have discussed this issue at the 5th OJA Forum.

Experts from Textkernel, the Oxford Internet Institute, IBM Research and Leibniz University Hannover presented various methods to predict the future demand for skills using online job advertisements (OJAs). One method is to predict the demand based on historical data by extrapolating historical trends. Another approach is to analyse correlations between the demand for skills and exogenous factors. For example, influencing factors like technological progress, economic changes or developments in legislation can determine the demand for skills.

The experts emphasized the importance of forecasting the future demand for skills to reduce the skills gap. This gap can cause negative economic consequences. On the one hand, a concise forecast is relevant at an organisational level to assess which skills should be educated more intensively. On the other hand, a precise prediction concerns the employee level to plan which employee can replace whom in a company in the future.

In addition to the topic of forecasting the demand for skills, the participants discussed the OJA Guide elaborated by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training. The guide collects knowledge, methods, and best practices for analysing online job advertisements and aims to set common standards.

In the following blog posts, the experts present their work on predicting the demand for skills using OJAs and explain opportunities and challenges. The posts include videos of the presentations given by the experts at the OJA Forum. At the beginning of this blog series, Johannes Müller from the software company &effect gives an insight into the the project „The Online Job Ad Analysis Cycle – From data collection to analysis“, also known as the OJA Guide, by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training which will be published in the next few weeks.

First results of the project „The Online Job Ad Analysis Cycle – From data collection to analysis“

In the video, Johannes Müller first introduces the structure and the basic idea of the OJA Guide. The idea is to follow one specific online job posting through its different stages. Each stages comes with processes, challenges, and methods, which are individually elaborated in the OJA Guide. Finally, Johannes Müller summarizes the challenges that can arise in structuring the field and outlines the next steps.