Bulletin of Electrical Engineering and Informatics

Vol. 9, No. 6, December 2020, pp. xx~xx

ISSN: 2302-9285, DOI: 10.11591/eei.v9i6.xxxx  1

Analyzing the Relationship between Information Technology

Jobs Advertised On-line and Skills Requirements using
Association Rules
Frederick F. Patacsil1, Michael Acosta2
1,2
College of Computing, Information Technology Department, Pangasinan State University, Philippines

Article Info ABSTRACT (10 PT)

Skills gap is one of the challenge in the labor market and a universal problem
Article history: in every country especially in the Philippines. Skills gap is a mismatch
Received Jun x, 20xx between skills that the employer is looking for and the skills the job seekers
must possess. This study proposed a methodology for identifying and
Revised Nov x, 20xx
analyzing skill – job relationship using frequency word occurrences of skills
Accepted Dec x, 20xx as a requirement of the job. It employs association rule mining which aims to
discover frequent patterns, relationships among set of items in the database.
It collected published job vacancy data to IT job and skills requirement from
Keywords:
various job portal websites. They were manually assigned job title for as
skill-job relationship implied by its job skill based on the published job and employed association
Skills gap rule mining using FP-growth. The study revealed that skill words are highly
association rule mining related in a certain job requirement. The results of the study could provide
insights on the gap between the school acquired skills and actual IT industry
FP-growth
skill needs and as basis for curriculum enhancement and policy making
skill words interventions by the Philippine government in its educational system.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license.

Corresponding Author:
Frederick F. Patacsil,
College of Computing, Information Technology Department
Pangasinan State University, Philippines
Email: [email protected]

Michael E. Acosta,
College of Computing, Information Technology Department
Pangasinan State University, Philippines
Email: [email protected]

1. INTRODUCTION
In the paper released by the European Commission [1], they stressed that human capital is vital and
a major driver of inclusive growth. With the ongoing trends such as globalization, demographic change,
technological factor and digitalization, jobs become increasingly skill-intensive. There are increasing
mismatches between skills or qualification and skills required by the economy. Job skills mismatch is a
universal problem and affects nations across the globe and the Philippines is no exception. Labor markets
around the world are confronted to various mismatches, including mismatch between the number of job
seekers and employment opportunities, which is reflected in unemployment [2]. The International Labor
Organization (ILO) refers job skills mismatch as ”various type of imbalances between skills offered and
skills needed in the world of work” [2]. It is a situation in the labour market where the labor demand or jobs
does not match the level of skills and competencies required in the jobs [3].

Journal homepage: http://beei.org

2  ISSN: 2302-9285
The European Training Foundation [4] classified skills mismatch into four dimensions/levels. These
are: vertical, horizontal, quantitative and qualitative.
Vertical mismatch occurs when a person may have the right skills for a specific task or occupation,
but the level of skill is lower than what would usually be required for the specific occupation or task. This
dimension typically consists of over and under education and /or under-skilling. In general, it happens at the
level of the match between a firm and a worker if no suitable employee is available to hire at the time of an
existing vacancy wherein the person hired is under-qualified or under-skilled or in the other hand the person
is overqualified.
On the other hand, horizontal mismatch occurs when the qualification level is sufficient but the type
or field of qualification does not adequately match. For example, sufficient numbers of computer
programmers with a qualification in computer programming are not available, but individuals with
qualifications in related fields are available. It could also imply a much bigger discrepancy between fields
required and fields hired. For instance, a philosophy graduate is hired as computer programmer. The more
detailed job requirements can be measured in terms of skills or qualifications, the more likely that some
horizontal mismatch is found.
The mismatch could manifest either in quantitative (mismatch in numbers) and qualitative mismatch
a difference between supply and demand. Quantitative mismatch happens when there may be an overall
shortage of of workers compared to the number required while the latter case implies there is sufficient
supply in terms of headcount, but the supply does not provide a good match in terms of demanded skills
versus available in the workforce.
Aside from these, skills obsolescence [1] refers to the process by which worker’s skills become
obsolete due to ageing which depreciates certain manual skills trough technological or economic change
which renders certain skills unnecessary or through under-utilization of skills (as cited in the studies of Allen
and DeDrip [5] ; Van Loo et. al [6]). Based on Cedofop European Skills and Jobs Survey [7, 8], those
working in the ICT sector believe that their skills will become outdated in the near future with 29%
likelihood while employees in financial, insurance, real state services and in professional, scientific, or
technical services with 24% and 23% respectively are also at high risk of skills obsolescence. It must be
noted that the workers employed in the ICT, health, managerial and engineering-related occupations have
changing occupational skills profiles while employees in the primary sector, elementary or person l service
occupations are insulated from technological innovation.
In Europe, the causes of job skills mismatch can be attributed to a number of factors such as
technological progress, economic development social change as Kiss [9] enumerated. Technological factors
include the widespread use of information and communication technologies that triggered an increased
demand for skilled workers that the existing ICT workforce cannot meet and because of the technological
changes, it diminished the demand for manual task. Economic development, include practices such as
outsourcing or sector restructuring. Demographic factors are trends affecting the labor workforce such as age
which is a barrier to an efficient matching of skills supply and demand. In the Philippine context, in a study
entitled “Policy Framework for Improving Labour Market Efficiency Through More Competitive Jon Skills
Matching in the Philippines” by the International Labour Organization, Bureau of Employers activities and
the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) [10] they noted that the three main causes the job
skills mismatched affecting manufacturing, electronics and tourism sectors are the following: weak labor-
market information system, inadequate preparation in terms of education, training and guidance, and weak
support for Science and Technnology. Lacson [11] in his article “Job Skills Mismatch” pointed out the
contributing factors in the job skills mismatch are the low-level of basic education and the predominance of
micro and small enterprises which provide inadequate job training programs.
Amid the job creation strategy of the government and many job openings induced by the growing
economy, employability remains a perennial problem in the Philippines. As cited in the article “Unskilled
Grads” Create Job Mismatch” [12], the country’s tertiary education system is facing a serious problem of
producing ‘unskilled’ college graduates which yield in a rising joblessness as stated by the Philippine
Business for Education. Lacson [11] noted that the Philippines is a labor-surplus job market and continue to
produce annually an average of about 600,000 college graduates, but only 75 percent are hired within a year
after graduation. Added to this are other new entrants to the labor force, is the unschooled youth. Thus,
employers are stricter in hiring.Based from the January 2020 latest labor force survey from Philippine
Statistics Authority showed that the estimated unemployment rate of 5.5%. The same unemployment rate of
5.3 percent was registered in January 2019. The percentage of college graduates that were unemployed is
26.9, 10.0 percent were college undergraduates and 28.7 percent have completed junior high school of the old
curriculum. Consequently, it can be inferred that among the unemployed persons in January 2020, 63.3
percent were males.  Of the total unemployed, the age group 15 to 24 years comprised 42.4 percent, while the
age group 25 to 34, 32.1 percent. Meanwhile, the underemployment falls to a percentage of 14.8 compared to

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15.4% in 2019 of the same month, a decline of 0.6%. The Merriam dictionary defined the underemployed as
employed persons who in a labor force at less than full-time or regular jobs or at inadequate with respect to
their training or economic needs. One of the reasons of unemployment and underemployment in the
Philippines is the job skills mismatch. Despite with all the government efforts, the figures and the number of
college-educated unemployed, self-employed and the underemployed still remains, which indicate that there
are gaps leading to jobs-skills mismatch that need to be addressed in order to tap the full productive potential
of a young Filipino labor force.
Through the years, the education system in the Philippines undergone several has undergone several
stages of development. The Philippines have adapted a three layer system where three separate agencies
govern the three layers of education outlined by the Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM)
1992. The Department of Education (DepEd) oversees the delivery of basic education system and adapted K-
12 system with the aim to expose the student into three different tracks of specialization. At the apex of this
structure, is the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) which ensures quality education to be at par to
international standards. The middle layer is the Technical and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) which
mobilizes industry, labor, local government units (LGUs) and tech-vocational institutions in skills
development. This involves the industry and employer in skills development. It also administers internship
program. Despite all of these, there exist to be an academe-industry gap in the Philippines.

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The tertiary education and higher education was being supervised by the Commission on Higher
Education (CHED). The CHED was created through RA 7722, or Higher Education Acts of 1994. The
CHED supervises the tertiary and higher education where higher education institutions and programs are at
par with the international standards. It is mandated in the promotion of relevant and higher quality education;
ensures that quality higher education shall be accessible to all; guarantee and protect academic freedom for
continuing intellectual growth, advancement of learning and research, development of responsible and
effective leadership, education of high level professionals and enrichment of historical and cultural heritages;
and commit moral ascendency that eradicates corrupt practices, institutionalizes transparency and
accountability and encourages participatory governance. However, January 2020 job statistic shows that
unemployment stands at 5.3% and translates to 2.39 million people had no job in the Philippines. In addition,
underemployment rate is 14.8 or 6.32 million people. With this statistical data, it is very significant to have a
relationship between Industry and academia as they both are strongly collaborated with each other. Colleges
and Universities need their graduates to get job in a company but, companies did not found job-ready
professionals or graduates who can satisfy the expectations of Industry standards.
Bernate [13] stated the causes between academe-industry gap. He stressed that “despite the fact that
the principles of academic partnership has been adopted by many institutions, both private and public, in the
past decade or more, its full potential is far from being utilized due to the basic attitudinal differences and
driven interests of the stakeholders, thereby making the partnership problematic”. He enumerated problems
of academic-industry partnership and they are as follows () organizational, administrative and management
aspects, (2) divergence of objectives between academe and industry, most often caused by changes in
priorities on industry side, (3) lack of professional approach in maintaining collaboration, (4) lack of
incentives for industry who see industry academe linkages initiatives as a form of company social
responsibility, and (5) low awareness prevents the private sector from fully taking part , and from benefiting
from existing government policies and programmes. Moya [3] posited that involving the industry in the
development of quality higher education is not part of the CHEDs mandate. Direct participation of business
and industry in higher education via the CHED is yet to be institutionalized. Hence, there is direct reference
to involving industry and employers in skills development. This problematic academe-industry partnership
reinforces job skills mismatch.
Based on the report by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) on Computing Curricula
in 2005 [14], they provided a comparative view of the performance capabilities expected of the graduates of
each degree program. It listed nearly 60 performance capabilities across 11 categories. For each capability,
each discipline is assigned a value from 0 to 5, 5 being the highest and 0 being the lowest. They highlighted
that information technology professionals should be able to work effectively at planning, implementation,
configuration, and maintenance of an organization’s computing infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in the 2008 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) IT curricula guidelines [15],
the BSIT program aims to provide graduates with the skills and knowledge to take on appropriate
professional positions in Information Technology upon graduation. They also indicated that an IT graduate
must acquire a skill set that enables him or her to successfully perform integrative tasks as in the different
pervasive themes. They highlighted the following attributes on an IT graduates.First, IT graduates must
design and integrate IT-based solution which includes both technological elements, such as hardware,
networking, software and data, as well as people and processes. They must therefore develop a user-centered
approach to technology. Second, concerning information assurance and security, security must therefore be a
central consideration in any attempt to select, create, integrate, deploy and administer IT systems. Third, IT
graduates must be able to handle such complex situation to focus on those aspects of the situation that are
most relevant to the user and the wider context in which the user is expected to function. IT graduates
therefore must develop the ability to use abstraction to form a model of the situation in which the need for an
IT-based solution arises and in which the IT-based solution has to be integrated. Fourth, IT graduates must
have the skills and knowledge to use the technology appropriately. This requires extensive capabilities in the
core information technologies, including programming, web, information management, computer hardware
and networking, and HCI. IT graduates must therefore be able to use their technical expertise to integrate
existing and new technologies. Fifth, IT graduates must also be extremely adaptable. IT graduates must
therefore develop lifelong learning habits and must be willing not only to become familiar with emerging
technologies, but also, if required, with legacy technologies. Sixth, IT professionals will be involved at all
levels in organizations, and must exhibit the highest levels of professionalism. And lastly, IT graduates must
develop the ability to function effectively in such diverse teams. This requires them to develop superior
interpersonal skills, including effective oral, written, presentation and listening skills. Moreover, since IT
graduates will often be the interface between users and the technology, they must develop the ability to
translate the language of users into technical language, and vice versa.

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In addition to the report, the National Association of Colleges and Employers conducted a survey to
determine what qualities employers consider most important in applicants seeking employment. The
identified the following ten factors have been frequently identified. These are communication skills (verbal
and written), honesty/integrity, teamwork skills, Interpersonal skills, motivation/initiative, strong work ethic,
analytical skills, flexibility/adaptability, computer skills and self-confidence.
There have been studies that explored employable skills or competencies of Information Technology
graduates that must have. They are classified into technical and nontechnical skills or hard skills and soft
skills.
Davis and Woodward [16] surveyed 222 Information System graduates of a Midwestern university
in the United States. They found out that employers were looking for graduates who possessed both strong
technical and nontechnical skills. The top technical skills were computer software skills, networking and
computer hardware skills.They also revealed the soft skills needed in order to become successful in the IT
field. These were thinking skills, personal characteristics, desire to learn, attitude and motivation, teamwork,
and communication skills. It was also pointed out that these non-technical skills or soft skills are as important
as the latter for employment and success.
Radermacher and Walia [17] conducted literature review to determine areas graduating students
most frequently fall short of the expectations of industry or academia. The results indicated that graduating
students are lacking in many different areas, including technical abilities (design, testing, configuration
management tools, etc.) personal skills (oral and written communication, teamwork, etc.) and professional
qualities (e.g. ethics).
In the study of Scaffidi [18] they aimed to uncover desirable competencies both technical and soft
skills for computer science graduates. They highlighted soft skills for software developers sought by
employers such as collaboration and communication skills that is tied to personal attributes such as
innovation, ability to cope up with ambiguity and ability to learn quickly.
Some of the works attempted to uncover the skills they had gained through on-the-job-training. The
study of Patacsil and Tablatin [19] examined the importance of soft and hard skills as perceived by the
industry partners and IT students. The study revealed that teamwork and communication skills are very
important soft skills to be possessed by IT graduates as perceived by the respondents.
Brigula et. al [20] emphasized the IT skills, critical thinking, communication and problem solving
skills are the top 4 skills needed in order to be hired in the IT industry. It must be noted in the study the
divergent views between IT practitioners and educators when it comes to problem solving skills. IT
professionals gave a higher rank in importance on problem solvingskill than those in the academe.
The IT Competency Model [21] identifies the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for workers to
perform successfully in the field of information technology (IT). The model is depicted as a pyramid
consisting of several tiers. The arrangement of the tiers in this shape is not meant to be hierarchical, or to
imply that competencies at the top are at a higher level of skill. Instead, the model’s tapered shape represents
the increasing specialization and specificity of proficiencies covered. Its tiers are further divided into blocks
that represent competency areas (i.e., groups of knowledge, skills, and abilities), which are defined using
critical work functions and technical content areas. Tiers 1 through 3 represent the “soft-skills” and work
readiness skills that most employers demand. Each tier covers a different group of competencies. Tier 1 –
Personal Effectiveness Competencies are personal attributes essential for all life roles. Often referred to as
"soft skills," personal effectiveness competencies are generally learned in the home or community and honed
at school and in the workplace. Tier 2 – Academic Competencies are primarily learned in a school setting.
They include cognitive functions and thinking styles. Academic competencies are likely to apply to all
industries and occupations. Tier 3 – Workplace Competencies represent motives and traits, as well as
interpersonal and self-management styles. They are generally applicable to a large number of occupations
and industries. Industry-specific Competencies Tiers 4 and 5 show the industry-wide technical competencies
needed to create career lattices within an industry. These competencies are considered cross-cutting, as they
allow a worker to move easily across industry sub-sectors. Rather than narrowly following a single
occupational career ladder, this model supports the development of an agile workforce. Like the foundational
tiers, Tiers 4 and 5 deal with distinct types of competencies. Tier 4 – Industry-Wide Technical Competencies
cover the knowledge and skills and abilities from which workers across the industry can benefit, regardless of
the sector in which they operate. Because of this, many of the critical work functions on this tier deal with
awareness or understanding. Tier 5 – Industry-Sector Technical Competencies represent a sub-set of industry
technical competencies that are specific to an industry sector. As a result, the critical work functions deal
more with performing tasks than those on Tier 4. The Employment and Training Administration’s IT model
does not include Tier 5 competencies. The upper tiers represent the specialization that occurs within specific
occupations within an industry. Included in this category are occupation-specific skills requirements and

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management competencies. This study will adopt the model which listed some IT knowledge, skills, and
abilities.
In the light of the above statements, it is worthwhile to complement traditional skills research with
more flexible and dynamic approach to determine skill gaps. This study proposed a new methodology of
retrieving and analyzing the content of skill job advertisements.
This paper analyzed words and word patterns of IT job published online in relationship to the skills
requirements as perceived that of the industry. This study helps to determine the actual and future needs and
trends of IT jobs in the market. Furthermore, this will serve as a basis for curriculum enrichment and laid out
the intervention program to address the gap between the skills acquired in the school and the IT industry skill
needs. The results of the study could provide insights on the gap between the school acquired skills and
actual IT industry skill needs.It seeks to attain the following objectives:
1. To determine words/ word pattern skills needs of the IT industry in the labor market based on online
advertisement?
2. To analyze the words / word pattern skills needs of the IT industry in the labor market based on
online advertisement?

2. RESEARCH METHOD

This study was descriptive research in nature. A data ingestion was utilized to gather published job
skills for IT professional as stated in CHED memo and ACM information technology curricula.

The procedure of collecting published job vacancy data to IT job skills requirement involves several
steps as shown in Figure 1.

Job Information
Searching
Job-hunting sites in IT Job Vacancies and
the Philippines Skills Requirements
1. Job Street.com Information  Classification
2. Kalibrr Carrers Data Extraction
Ingestion and Data Method
3. Freelancer
4. Linkedln Cleaning  Association Rule
5. Facebook  FP-Grwoth

6. Google

Skill Words / Patterns highly related in a certain

IT job requirement

Figure 1. Research Framework

2.1 Job Information Searching Published Job Skills

It starts with selecting the information source using google search using the keyword “information
technology jobs Philippines” and Job-hunting sites in the Philippines like job street, Kalibrrn and other job
hunting sites.

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Figure 2. Sample Screen Job Street

2.2 Data ingestion

The identified job published entered into the data ingestion phase, which involves identifying job
vacancies available in the source and downloading their content into an excel file. All information on the
published job vacancies were transferred to an excel file.

2.3 Information extraction and data cleaning

The retrieved text from Job-hunting sites contain several HTML tags, unnecessary characters, non-
textual characters, and web codes which were automatically stripped out using a modified program in PHP.
In addition, data obtained from Job-hunting sites usually contain syntactic features, html code and entities
like <>& which are embedded in the original sites. Thus, it was necessary to remove those contents from the
data because they might affect the result of sentiment classification and were not useful for the machine
learning for sentiment analysis. Hence, a PHP application module was designed and developed was used for
cleaning retrieve text from Job-hunting sites.The next step is the information extraction phase were the
relevant content of the identified job skills were organized and classified.

2.4 Skill and Job Classification

Building a job classification that organized records into exclusive job groups – IT staff, network
administrator, system analyst, computer programmer and database administrator. This is based on the
primary job roles of BS information technology graduate as stated in the Commission Higher Education
(CHED) memo 25 series of 2015 and ACM information technology curricula 2017. Appended the excel
dataset with an additional attribute “Job” and
manually assigned job title for each of the records as implied by its job skill based on the published job. This
work is necessaryto provide the algorithm with information about the skills needed for each job.

2.4 Skills Pattern Recognition

2.4.1Pattern Recognition Process

The schema that was utilized to determine the frequency of the words was TF-IDF or Term
Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency. This schema was used as numeric measures to show the
importance of job skill words in the published job web sites. The method used to determine the dominant
skills words and patterns is the frequency of the appearance of words in the published web sites weighted
which has a greater importance. The TF-IDF value increases proportionally to the number of times a word
(skills) appears on the web sites, but is offset by the frequency of the word in the corpus, which helps to
control for the fact that some words are generally more common than others.

2.4.2 Association Mining Rules

This stage presents a way for mining skills words from a collection published jobs and their skills
requirements by automatically extracting frequent words in each web site. Below we define and describe the
association rules:
Consider the following assumptions for representing the association rule in terms of mathematical
representation, T = {wi,wi2, … , im} be a set of items. Where skillsSc = { } s1,s2,..., sm , where each dataset
si is a set of keywords such that si ⊆ A. Let Wi be a set of keywords. A skillsti is said to contain Wi if and
only if Wi⊆ti . An association rule is an implication of the form Wi ⇒W j where Wi ⊂ A, Wj ⊂ A and Wi ∩W
j = φ . There are two important basic measures for association rules, support(s) and confidence(c). The rule

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Wi ⇒ W j has supports in the collection of tweets Tc if s% of tweets in Tc contain Wi ∪ Wj. The formula for
computing the support and confidence are given below:
Support of WiWj
Support ( WiWj )=
Total number of Skill words
The rule Wi⇒W jholds in the collection of skills Tc with confidence c if among those skill words
that contain Wi, c % of them contain W j also. The confidence is calculated by the following formula:
Wi Support (WiWj)
Confidence [ ]
Wj
=
Support (Wi)
Frequent item sets are quantified by support which is the ratio of the number of instances where [w1
wj] appeared together in a single transaction to the total number of transactions while the confidence is
defined as the probability of finding [w1, wj] together. This study follows the following mining steps utilizing
association rule mining:
1) Search all skill words and the combination of skills words (skill wordsets) whose support is
greater than the user specified minimum support (called minsup). Such sets are called the frequent keyword
sets [11]. In this study minimum support of (0.2, 0.1, 0.5) were specified input as minsup, if the skill word
meets the condition then skill words is regarded as frequent required skill words.
2) Use the identified frequent skill wordsets to generate the rules that satisfy a user specified
minimum confidence (called minconf). The frequent keywords generation requires more effort and the rule
generation is straightforward.

2.4.3 Correlation of job skills requirements

Words Lift ratio is applied in this study to determine the correlation between the words in the rule.
Confidence( A υ B)
Lift =
Support ( A)
If the value of lift rule > 1 then it has positive correlation. A lift value greater than 1 indicates words
appear more often together than expected. If the value of lift rule < 1 then it has negative correlation. A lift
smaller than 1 indicates that words appear less often together than expected. If the value of lift rule = 1 then it
is independent. A lift value of 1 indicates that the words appear almost as often together as expected.

2.4.4 The Frequent Pattern Growth FP-Growth) Approach

FP-Growth is one of the most utilized association rule mining algorithms. The FP-Growth algorithm
mines frequent itemsets without generating the candidates. In this study, the creation of FP-growth Tree
consists of the following steps.
1. The FP-Growth algorithm starts with the first scan of the datasets (tweets) which derive the set of
frequent skill words single item pattern (1-itemsets). The input minimum support count will be the basis of
frequency, then the set of frequent job skill words is sorted in the order of descending
2. An FP-tree is then constructed as follows. Construct the conditional FP tree in the sequence of
reverse order of F - List - generate frequent item set. The job skill words in each tweet are processed in L
order (i.e., sorted according to descending support count), and a branch is created for each tweet. Fig. 4
illustrates the whole package of the Pattern Recognition Model which was used in this study. The pattern has
three important compartments which embodies several steps to follow (1) data collection, (2) data processing,
and (3) data recognition. Job skill word and pattern results obtained from association rule and FP growth
were presented and analyzed. The most frequent job skill terms occurred from the generated dataset
1. The first step includes conducting tweet analysis using FP-Growth in terms of frequent patterns of
dataset.
2. The second step includes the analyzation of a strong relationship between a pair of words using
the create association rules. To arrive at a strong relationship between items, the proponent experimented
difference values for minimum support threshold and values for minimum confidence threshold.
3. After pattern recognition experimentation, word visualization was conducted to show the most
frequent skill words as a requirement of the job published.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (10 PT)

The aim of this research is to find relationship patterns of job skills and job posting online. The
results revealed skills required for a certain IT job position. The results utilized skill (term) frequency and
co-occurrence within each job posting. The results of relationships between the published information
technology job and skills requirements are shown in Tables 1-5 and Figure 3-6.

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3.1 Skills Required for Database Administrator

The association rule results in table 1 reveal the relationship between job skill requirements for
database administrator. These were monitoring of databases, applications of database, knowledge in SQL
database, manage database technologies, and knowledge in business.The said skill rules are the basic skill
requirements for a database administrator based on the published IT job and skill requirements. In addition,
figure 3 reveals that the center of the job skills of a database administrator focuses on databases. This implies
that the major task of a database administrator is to manage, monitor databases and provide database
solutions to the business entity. Furthermore, the lift values indicates that experiences in technical solution
(3.5) and manages databases technologies (3.5) was the technical skill words who obtain the most number
the occurrence in the posted job requirements of a database administrator. .

Table 1. Discovered Job Skills Required for Database Administrator

Premises Conclusion Support Confidence Lift
monitoring Databases 0.285714 1 1.75
applications Databases 0.285714 1 1.75
SQL Databases 0.285714 1 1.75
knowledge Business 0.285714 1 2.33
manage technologies 0.285714 1 3.5
applications Software 0.285714 1 3.5
experience, technical Solutions 0.285714 1 3.5
technical, solutions Experience 0.285714 1 1.75
business, intelligence Databases 0.285714 1 1.75
databases, software Applications 0.285714 1 3.5

Figure 3. The graphical representation of the discovered job skills for database administrator

3.2 Skills Required for a System Analyst

Table 2 reveals the relationships between job skill requirements for system analyst were focused on
system design, analysis and problem solving plus SQL. In addition, table 2 shows that year of experience in
design, analysis of a system and experiences in SQL are the identified skill rules that a system analyst must
possess. In addition, relevant and knowledge in the area of design, analysis, problem solving and SQL is
also desired by employers in this IT job.In addition, figure 4 reveals that the center of the job skills of a
system analyst focuses on year of experience in design and analysis plus SQL or equivalent work in system
design and analysis. This implies that the experience in system analysis and design is the main skill that a
system analyst should possess. Lift value indicates that knowledge in relevant problem solving skills is the
most needed skills by a system analyst based on the occurrences of the word skills in the job posting for
system analyst.

Table 2. Discovered Job Skills Required for System Analyst

Premises Conclusion Support Confidence Lift
equivalent Work 0.26 0.80 1.46
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design Analysis 0.26 0.80 2.07
years, analysis Design 0.26 0.80 2.48
design years, analysis 0.26 0.80 2.48
SQL Years 0.26 1.00 1.72
solving Problem 0.29 1.00 3.44
relevant Knowledge 0.26 1.00 3.88
work, equivalent Years 0.26 1.00 1.72
analysis, design Years 0.26 1.00 1.72

Figure 4. The graphical representation of the discovered job skills for system analyst

3.3 IT Staff
Table 3 shows the needed skills for information technology (IT) staff is should be a graduate of
information computer technology. Graduates of these courses acquired the set of foundational and
employability skills, knowledge, and abilities that are required for all information worker employees.
These are the universal skills—problem solving and apply technical knowledge and tools
effectively.In addition, figure 5 reveals that there are no required skills for IT staff were identified instead a
graduate of bachelor related to information science, computer science and technology without any
experience. The result indicates that an IT staff needs to be a graduate of computer information technology
because has the basic needed IT knowledge and skills for IT staff.

Table 3. Discovered Job Skills required for IT staff

Premises Conclusion Support Confidence Lift
Information, Computer Science 0.44 0.93 1.87
Technology, Information, Science 0.44 0.93 1.87
Information, Science Technology, Computer 0.44 0.93 1.99
Technology, Information, Computer 0.44 0.93 1.66
Computer, Science Technology, Information 0.44 0.93 1.49
Information Technology 0.63 1.00 1.60
Technology, Computer, Information 0.44 1.00 1.60
Information, Computer, Technology 0.44 1.00 1.60

Figure 5. The graphical representation of the discovered job kills for It staff

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3.4 Computer Programmer

Table 4 reveals the relationship between job skill requirements for computer programmers. The
result reveals that a computer programmer must have a skill and knowledge in SQL database and
knowledgeable in python, javascript and office as programming and application productivity tools. In
addition, they should have skills in CSS, SK and HTML basic skill requirements for a computer programmer
based on the published IT job and skill requirements. Furthermore, techniques such as software design and
software engineering were included as an addition skills requirement for a computer programmer.This
indicates that aside from the programming skills they should have experience in software design and must
have knowledge software engineering. Figure 6 reveals that the center of the job skills of a computer
programmer focused on software engineering connected with HTML, CSS and SP. The said skill
requirements were the most words skill posted online as reflected in lift value. In addition, the result reveals
that he manipulating SQL database plus python and javascript as programming tools is also an essential skill
in application software design and development.

Table 4. Discovered Job Skills Required for Computer Programmers

Premises Conclusion Support Confidence Lift
SQL Python 0.07 0.24 2.59
SQL JavaScript 0.07 0.24 2.59
SQL Office 0.08 0.29 3.62
software SP 0.07 0.36 3.02
software System 0.07 0.36 3.39
design Software 0.07 0.38 2.92
engineering software 0.07 0.42 2.26
Software design 0.07 0.50 2.92
SP software 0.07 0.56 3.02
CSS SP 0.07 0.56 4.69
CSS HTML 0.07 0.56 5.28

Figure 6. The graphical representation of the discovered job skills for computer programmer

3.5 Network Administrator

Table 5 reveals the relationship between network administrator and job skill requirements. Table 5
recognizes that network administrator must have a skill in experience network engineering, knowledge in
networking, network troubleshooting and CISCO network. The said skill rules are the needed skill
requirements for a network administrator based on the published IT job and skill requirements. The skill rules
can be explained with that a network administrator should be experienced in knowledge in networking,
network engineering, CISCO and be able to troubleshoot networks. These are database-related technical
skills that a database administrator should possess. In addition, Figure 7 reveals that the center of the job
skills of a database administrator focuses on experience in networking. This implies that the major skills
should a network administrator should posses is an experience in engineering and design of networks using
CISCO

Table 5. Discovered job skills required for network administrator

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Premises Conclusion Support Confidence Lift
engineering network 0.24 0.80 1.46
engineering experience, network 0.24 0.80 1.77
Network experience 0.45 0.82 1.20
knowledge network 0.27 0.82 1.50
experience, Cisco network 0.25 0.87 1.58
troubleshooting network 0.27 0.88 1.59
network, engineering experience 0.24 1.00 1.46

Figure 7. The graphical representation of the discovered job skills for network administrator
yy

4. CONCLUSION
This study proposes a methodology for identifying and analyzing skill – job relationship using
frequency word occurrences of skills as a requirement of the job. Furthermore, association rules are also
applied to identify the relationship of words in relationship to job requirements. The study revealed that skill
words are highly related in a certain job requirement. For a database administrator, the center of the job
skills focuses on databases. This implies that the major task of a database administrator is to manage, monitor
databases and provide database solutions to the business entity. In the case of computer programming, the
skill rules can be explained that computer programmers need front end and back end programming skills plus
knowledge in SQL in the development of an application system. Skill rules also identify that network
administrator must have a skill in experience network engineering, knowledge in networking, network
troubleshooting and CISCO network. Years of experience in design, analysis of a system and experiences in
SQL are the identified skill rules that a system analyst.
The most informative by-results of the classification-association process are a skill word list of job
requirements. In addition, it provides direct, actionable information about skills demand that can be useful in
planning and developing educational schemes. The results also help educational institution to understand the
relationship between the data in posted job and the required skills / knowledge. It is therefore advisable, to
identify demands in a greater detail, and bridges the gap between skills need and supply with more flexible
hands-on training programs.
The future directions of the research study is to further explore other text mining tools and other
visualization tools.There are many available tools and applications that can be tested for its information
retrieval capabilities specifically in the area skill words and skill word patterns recognition, searching other
potentially useful sources of data like web based repositories such as online forums, blogs, and bulletin
boards.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was funded by Pangasinan State University through the support and initiative of the
research unit. This was also made possible through the utilization of the data analytics center of the
university.

REFERENCES
The main references are international journals and proceedings. All references should be to the most pertinent, up-to-date
sources and the minimum of references are 25. Policy that self citation is max 20%. References are written in IEEE style.
Please use a consistent format for references – see examples below (9 pt):

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Bulletin of Electr Eng & Inf
13 ISSN: 2302-9285 

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BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS (10 PT)

Frederick F. Patacsil received his B.Sc. degree from University of the Cordilleras (formerly
First author’s Baguio Colleges Foundation) in 1985. He received his M.Sc. degree and Doctor in Information
Photo (3x4cm) Technology from UC in .He is currently the Dean of College of Computing in Pangasinan
State University - Urdaneta City Campus.

Title of manuscript is short and clear, implies research results (First Author)
14  ISSN: 2302-9285
Michael E. Acosta obtained Bachelor of Science Information Technology in 2005 from
Pangasinan State University, Masters in Information Technology in 2014 from Colegio De
Dagupan,, and currently pursuing Doctor in Information Technology at the University of
Cordilleras . He is currently a faculty at the department of Information Technology, Pangasinan
State University - Urdaneta City Campus.

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