O*NET-SOC AutoCoder

New Jersey Switches to O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.1 from RMWC

  

RMWC is pleased to announce that New Jersey has selected O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.1, plus support and updates, from R.M. Wilson Consulting, Inc.

  

New Jersey joins Arizona, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Washington as RMWC’ customers transitioning from a less accurate version of O*NET-SOC AutoCoder software offered at no cost to States by the U.S. Employment and Training Administration.

  

Thank you New Jersey for choosing RMWC as your O*NET-SOC AutoCoder software and support vendor.  We’re very glad to have you!

  

Pennsylvania Switches to O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.1 from RMWC

RMWC is pleased to announce that Pennsylvania has selected O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.1, plus support and updates, from R.M. Wilson Consulting, Inc.

Pennsylvania joins Arizona, Missouri and Washington as RMWC’ customers transitioning from a less accurate version of O*NET-SOC AutoCoder software offered at no cost to States by the U.S. Employment and Training Administration.

Thank you Pennsylvania for choosing RMWC as your O*NET-SOC AutoCoder software and support vendor.  Welcome to the family!

  

Washington Licenses O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.1 from RMWC

RMWC is pleased to announce that Washington has selected O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.1, plus support and updates, from R.M. Wilson Consulting, Inc.

Washington joins Arizona and Missouri as RMWC’ customers transitioning from a less accurate version of O*NET-SOC AutoCoder software offered at no cost to States by the U.S. Employment and Training Administration.

Thank you Washington for choosing RMWC as your O*NET-SOC AutoCoder software and support vendor.  We’re very glad to have you aboard.

Iowa Renews O*NET-SOC AutoCoder Support for Five Years

 

In 2007, Iowa became the first State in the Nation to execute a multi-year agreement with RMWC for O*NET-SOC AutoCoder support – at that time a two-year agreement.

 

Now, I’m very pleased to announce that Iowa has executed a new support agreement for five more years!

So Iowa joins Kentucky and Alabama as States with five-year support agreements with RMWC for O*NET-SOC AutoCoder.  Thanks Iowa!  We really appreciate your confidence!

 

O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.1 Released

O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.1, available today, is a big upgrade hiding behind a small number.   Given the big enhancement delivered in v6.0, we thought we might catch our breath a bit – refining rather than reinventing – but as development progressed, it became clear that v6.1 would be much more than initially expected.   What makes v6.1 different?

All of our customers, State and Commercial, will benefit from:

• Support for O*NET 13 – the most current version available from the O*NET Center;

• 100% increase in speed (yes, it really is twice as fast) – ‘software upgrade’ and ‘faster’ rarely exist together in the real world, but v6.1 delivers both in spades;

• A nearly 20% increase in the size of our proprietary dictionary – as new terms become important in describing the world of work, our dictionary of analyst-weighted words continues to grow;

• Improved handling of acronyms – saving time never goes out of style, and there is no need to type ‘licensed practical nurse’ when you can type ‘lpn’ instead.  O*NET-SOC AutoCoder has worked well in coding acronyms for years (see the results for ‘lpn’ above); but as we looked at a sample of  poorly-coded ads we noticed that occasionally acronyms like ‘lpn’ are entered as ‘l p n’ or ‘l.p.n.’ – v6.0 (and earlier versions) wouldn’t recognize these alternate formats, but v6.1 now does; and,

• Increased accuracy – v6.1 gets us back on the track of delivering accuracy improvements with each new version (more on this in a future post).  This was critical to us, because as you’ll recall, when we added multilingual support to v6.0, the best we could do at that point was hold v6.0 accuracy stable while dealing with the special cases where the same words in Spanish have different meanings in English.

In addition, v6.1 provides the following enhancements targeted at commercial customers (and States spidering content to supplement their job ads):

• New codes for non-job ads – commercial job boards, particularly the free and low-cost sites, are home to significant numbers of non-job ads; including ads for investment opportunities, get-rich-quick schemes, products and services for sale, volunteer opportunities, and more.  Obviously O*NET doesn’t include codes for non-jobs; but since the ads exist, we’ve added the following codes (to a special code type, ONET2008-8 NEC, that can be selected from the admin menu) to capture them:

99-9999.01  Work from Home - Non-Specific Duties
99-9999.02  Get Rich Lifestyle Offerings
99-9999.03  Entrepreneurs Wanted - Business Opportunities
99-9999.04  Human Test Participants Wanted
99-9999.05  Human Donors Wanted
99-9999.06  Looking for Work - Jobs Wanted
99-9999.07  Person-to-Person Help Wanted
99-9999.08  Products Offered
99-9999.09  Services Offered
99-9999.10  Uncoded French Ads (v7.0 will code ads in French to O*NET)
99-9999.11  Job Fairs
99-9999.12  Adult Ads

• New ‘category’ data type – the more we know about a job ad, the better able we are to assign an accurate code; and sometimes we know things that are broader that a job title and description.  Examples can include: 1) general domain (e.g. engineering); 2) focus of a niche job board (e.g. retail sales); 3) level of responsibility (e.g. management); or 4) industry (e.g. pharmaceutical).   Each of these ‘categories’ of information can help refine the occupation choices generated based on an ad title and description – which is exactly what v6.1 now does; and,

  
  

• A new web service supporting ‘category’ data type – an application change to include ‘category’ data wouldn’t be useful without a high-volume method to pass in this new data type; so v6.1 includes a web service that adds this option.  

O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.1 from RMWC – still the only multilingual occupational coding software; but now delivering higher accuracy, twice the speed, plus key new features.  So we continue to raise the bar.  About the only thing we haven’t raised is the price.

Florida Renews O*NET-SOC AutoCoder Support

RMWC continues to appreciate the confidence placed in us by the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation.  Thanks Florida for being such a great State to work with!

  

AutoCoding Spanish Titles Works in the Real World

  

If you’re skeptical about the ability of O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.0 to deliver accurate codes for Spanish titles, you are certainly in good company.  But the feedback we’ve received from States to date has been positive.

  

Consider the following from one of our customers:

  

“About the Spanish job titles, let me tell you what a great success. We performed lots of test of different titles and we were pleasantly surprised how accurate the answers were. Most of the claimants when they call they tell you their title in Spanish and it was a little difficult for the agents to figure it out the right title in some cases but not anymore; they will enter the title in Spanish and get a quite good match.”

  

So, how much more does this cost?  Not a cent … we’ve simply added the additional functionality to our standard product and kept the price the same.  We still provide States with non-expiring licenses at no charge (with the purchase of one year of support at 40% less than Noblis charged); and we still guarantee accuracy or your money back.

  

Texas Enhances O*Net-SOC AutoCoder v6.0

   

Recently a potential customer asked if they should license O*NET-SOC AutoCoder with source code.  As you might expect, the answer depends on how the State plans to use AutoCoder.

   

As an illustration, Texas received AutoCoder v6.0 with source code two weeks ago, and they already have a modified version running that adds links to: a) occupational profiles; b) LMI wages; and c) job openings in Texas.  Sweet!

   

Each source-code license also comes with redistribution rights that allow States to share their updated applications with other States licensing AutoCoder from RMWC.

   

Some States choose to integrate AutoCoder into their business applications using standard web services provided with AutoCoder … Alabama, Kentucky, and Oregon illustrate the effectiveness of this approach … and if the standard web services meet your needs, then no source code license is necessary.

   

O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6 is the Best Choice

   

With the news that ITSC and Noblis will part company in 2009, States considering an alternative support provider may find the following presentation helpful: Ten Reasons why AutoCoder v6 is the Best Choice.

 

The cost of automated occupational coding is now so low, and the accuracy and consistency so high, that any other strategy for assigning codes is simply a waste of time and money. 

   

Private or public, who can afford waste in today’s economy?

   

No other solution matches O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6 from RMWC.

   

Accuracy Results for O*NET-SOC AutoCoder v6.0

   

With each release of O*NET-SOC AutoCoder we refine our methodologies and expand the supporting dictionaries to increase overall accuracy. 

   

The law of diminishing returns applies of course – so as we approach the theoretical maximum accuracy rate, our gains become smaller for the same investment.   

   

Yet with each major release we also expand flexibility – v4 added State-specific tuning, v5 added simultaneous support for multiple variants of O*NET-SOC, and v6 adds support for mixed English and Spanish search text.

   

This flexibility always comes at a cost to accuracy – standardizing on inputs, processes, and outputs would allow tuning that just isn’t possible when inputs (search text in mixed languages), processes (State tuning factors) and outputs (variants of O*NET-SOC) are all variables.

   

In the end, our investment in v6 to increase accuracy was offset by allowing mixed language search text – the same word in English can have a different meaning in Spanish.

   

Still, the 87.3% accuracy rate produced by v6 on a test sample far exceeds the 40.2% produced by the ITSC version 2 (their most current demo) on the same sample.

   

Looking beyond overall accuracy rates is important too – ideally an automated coding solution will be equally accurate for all occupational types. 

   

In reality, when looking at O*NET-SOC, it is easier to classify some occupations than others – so accuracy scores will vary.

   

Healthcare (major group 29) occupations are easier to code accurately than most others because the titles tend to reflect professional licenses and/or specific training (RN, LPN, CNA, DO, OT, etc.). 

   

In contrast, Sales occupations (major group 41) tend to be much harder – a ‘sales executive’ may refer to an upper-level manager or an entry-level retail position.   

   

Looking at accuracy rates by two-digit occupational families, you’ll notice that v6 delivered 80% or higher for all groups; whereas in contrast, v2 did a passable job for group 29 (68% accuracy), but dismally for group 41 (21% accuracy).  By the way, the ‘bubble size’ represents the number of sample records in each two-digit occupational group – the bigger the bubble, the more common the occupation in the sample.

   

Occupation Group 99 is a special category referring to ads that are too vague to allow accurate coding – ads that should be assigned a ‘not classified’ code.  Knowing when to ‘punt’ is one of the hardest tasks for an automated coder – set the threshold too low and far too many records are assigned a code of 99; but set it too high and the coder will jam records into codes when it shouldn’t.  RMWC AutoCoder v6 achieves a reasonable balance, delivering 54% accuracy for non-classifiable searches.  ITSC v2 on the other hand achieved the worst possible score of 0%.