On the Congruence Between Online Social Content and Future IT Skill Demand

Abstract

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.