The speed of digital transformation has resulted in new challenges for job seekers to become lifelong learners and to develop new skills faster than before. In this paper, our main objective is to examine how online content can serve as indicators for changes to the Information Technology (IT) industry and its in-demand skills. To study this relationship, we collect Reddit posts to represent social media content and job postings to reflect the IT industry based on which we explore possible correlations between them. Further, we propose a methodology to quantitatively estimate the predictive power of social media content for future in-demand skills. Our results show that the frequency of skill-related conversations on Reddit correlates with the popularity of skills in job posting data. Additionally, our findings indicate that the number of social posts dedicated to a specific skill can be a strong indicator for future job requirements. This is an important finding because identifying what skills the labor force should acquire will assist job seekers to plan their lifelong learning objectives to (a) maximize their employability, (b) continuously update their skills to remain in demand, and (c) be informed and actively engaged in defining knowledge trends, rather than reactively becoming informed of the latest information.
Rapid technological innovations, especially in the information technology space, demand the workforce to be vigilant by acquiring new skills to remain relevant and employable. The workforce needs to be engaged in a continuous lifelong learning process by educating themselves about skills that will be in demand in the future. To do so, it is essential for students, job seekers, and even recruiters to know which skills will be in demand in the future and to invest time and resources in developing these skills. On this basis, the main objective of this paper is to investigate whether social content can offer insight into potential future in-demand skills in the IT job market. Based on the analysis of social content from Reddit and job posting data from Dice and Monster websites, we find that social content related to job skills is a strong indicator for future in-demand skills. We further find that specific social content associated with recruitment-related topics are stronger indicators of future skills. Our findings encourage learners and job seekers to pay close attention to online social content to strategically plan new skills and maximize their employability.
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