Welcoming Jimena Renée Luna as our new VP of Customer Integration, Emerging Markets

We are proud to announce that Jimena Renée Luna will be joining JANZZ.technology as our new VP of Customer Integration, Emerging Markets. She will be responsible for all accounts in LATAM, EMEA and Southeast Asia.

Jimena is well-established and highly experienced in advising client governments and international organizations on tech policy, job creation, and economic development. Throughout her career, she has worked 10+ years designing and implementing related projects with teams across Latin America, Europe and Africa. At the World Bank, she performed research on labor markets and launched innovative solutions for job creation. In addition, she has worked for the U.S. CIO at the White House on digital policies to improve how citizens and businesses interact with government – helping to close the gap between the public and private sector on technology and innovation. More recently, she has worked on projects in Africa to promote the digital economy and digital development.

Jimena is enthusiastic about the job matching products and digital solutions offered by Swiss-based JANZZ.technology to clients around the world. She is confident that digital platforms, big data, and AI will drive the economy of the future. At a time when the world is facing a digital transformation and changes to the labor market, she is excited by the opportunity to work directly with global clients to provide them with digital solutions for job creation.

Jimena will be joining us on May 15. She will start working from Washington, DC, and then transfer to our headquarters in Zurich at a later date. We look forward to seeing Jimena applying her experience, enthusiasm and professionalism to our mission to better serve our clients.

Feel free to reach out to Jimena via email at j.luna@janzz.technology . She is fluent in English, French, and Spanish and will be happy to answer any questions you might have.

What skills will be indispensable in the future labour market?

JANZZ.technology has been actively contributing and creating solutions for matching jobs and skills in the digital age, such as the recently launched Realtime Labor Market Dashboard.

We help corporations, organisations and governments deal with the challenges during the current digital transformation and prepare the workforce to adapt to the future labour markets. Our technology provides real facts and insights, to help you to make the right decision. If you need to rethink, to upgrade or to have a better understanding of your human resources and education infrastructure, JANZZ.technology has the right tools.

JANZZ.technology applies explainable AI solutions

Humans can hardly understand the algorithms used for machine learning and text-driven artificial intelligence applications: How and why decisions are made? Are the results fair, transparent and explainable enough? Are the results biased in one way or another?

 

Explainable Artificial Intelligence is fundamental for our clients and users to understand the results of our matching tools.

If you are interested to know more about how JANZZ.technology applies explainable AI solutions, please write now to sales@janzz.technology.

Guarantee fair opportunities for everyone

Today in 2020, still not a single country can claim to have achieved gender equality in the workplace. Unconscious bias, stereotypes and prejudices happen more frequently than we think. Studies show that when the recruiting process is anonymous the bias is effectively reduced. JANZZ.technology has always been devoted to inclusive hiring since its foundation in 2008.

The International Women’s day is the day to commemorate how far we have come towards gender equality, but also to remind us how far away we are from the goal.  If you too, think that there are still major changes to be done, please contact us. We have the right tools to help you fight for equal opportunities for everyone.

JANZZ.technology – providing semantic technologies powered by ontology

If we ask a computer to translate the English sentence “the box is in the pen” into other languages, it will most likely interpret the word “pen” as the object we use to write with, this being the more frequently used meaning. But then the sentence will be nonsensical because, as we know, a larger object cannot be inside a smaller one.

Language processing or natural language processing is a much bigger challenge in AI than, for instance, image processing. We humans realize that, for this sentence to make sense, the word “pen” must mean a small area surrounded by a fence. A computer, on the other hand, lacks contextual knowledge and thus the logical reasoning needed to translate the sentence correctly. Another example would be “John is flying to the Big Apple on Tuesday.” You can probably guess what the result would be.

This is where semantic technologies come in. Among the many available methods, semantic techniques aim to improve computers’ understanding in processing natural/conversational languages through knowledge representation. Semantic technology is powered by ontology: it relies on semantic information encoded in ontology to identify nodes (e.g., words) that are semantically related.

At JANZZ.technology, we offer superior semantic technologies including semantic extraction, searching and matching powered by our comprehensive ontology in the domain of occupation data. To illustrate, JANZZ.technology’s semantic solutions can realize the following smart applications:

– Job searching and matching on related concepts

Related concepts are not (necessarily) synonyms but concepts which share similarities, sometimes given in completely different words or even languages. For example, “Neonatology” and “Pediatrics” are related concepts. With the information stored in ontology, semantic technology can identify how closely these two terms/professions are related to each other and, importantly, what kind of training/certifications one of these professionals needs in order to perform the other one’s job. This can be extremely helpful when transforming workforce skills on a large scale such as public employment services.

As another example, “Creative Director” and “Web Designer” are also related concepts but to a much lower degree compared to “Neonatology” and “Pediatrics”. If you are looking for a “Web Designer”, our semantic technologies would also recommend someone with job title “Creative Director” combined with skills in CSS, HTML and UX, or suggest such skills. Of course, “Concepteur Web”, “Nettdesigner”, “مصمم على شبكة الإنترنت” or “网页设计师” will also be matched. Related concepts can also be skills or education. For example, if you are looking for someone experienced with ERP systems, our semantic technologies know that candidates whose CVs list SAP, JD Edwards and MS Dynamics are all good matches because these are all ERP systems.

– Job searching and matching on degrees of skills

Semantic technology is not only able to match job postings and CVs containing the same skills, but it can also compare the degree of skills. For instance, “MS office skills” is a broad term and listed in many CVs. If you are looking for a Spreadsheet pro, you don’t want to be matched with a myriad of CVs listing basic MS office or beginner’s level Excel skills.

Similarly, if you are searching for professional CAD software skills, our semantic technologies would match CVs with CATIA, OpenSCAD or Rhino rather than TinkerCAD or BlocksCAD because the different specificities of CAD software are also stored in our ontology. Moreover, our semantic techniques not only identify levels of skills, but also report any training necessary for candidates to transform skills from one CAD software to another.

– Concept identification through interpretation of the context

Semantic technologies help identify cryptic concepts through context. Job titles can be very challenging for computers to identify. In the sentence “Company X is looking for an RF System Engineer, Building 8, Menlo Park, CA,” our software is able to decode each part of the sentence with the information stored in our ontology, such as industry codes, company names and places of work. In this case, “Building 8” is not an address but instead a mysterious department for hardware development at Facebook, and the “RF System Engineer” refers to “Senior Radio Frequency Engineer”.

– Job matching on overall dimension of occupation data

Some job titles, such as dentist, pilot, carpenter and Android app developer, already contain a lot of information about the specific position. When matching these jobs, it is possible to match almost exclusively on job titles. However, other titles like teacher, consultant, assistant, engineer and coordinator are much less specific. In such cases, one needs to include other criteria such as industry, skills, education, experience, etc., in order to conduct an accurate and meaningful matching. Semantic solutions from JANZZ.technology can perform such tasks with the data linked in ontology.

– Identifying gaps in the information

In contrast to machine learning, which is proficient in pattern recognition and classification, an ontology models meaning. It helps a system to understand CVs and job postings and perform gap analyses, thus creating a more user-friendly experience. For example, when matching candidates and jobs, semantic technologies can recommend skills, education or training which a given candidate lacks and thus help candidates optimize their CV.

Are you a large international corporation, organization or public employment service? Do you want to have the right technology to prepare and accompany your labor force throughout the digital transformation? Do you want to improve user experience during the application process? Do you want to build a more powerful system which makes your products stand out from the HR tech crowd? To integrate the latest semantic extraction, searching and matching technologies powered by JANZZ’s ontology, please write now to  sales@janzz.technology and let JANZZ.technology assist you.

Improve your skills-based matching with JANZZsme!

In today’s digital world, computers can analyse competences and work experience faster and more effectively than humans. JANZZsme! powered by ontology transforms data about education, training, work experience and specialisation. Which helps governments and organisations to broaden their talent pool.

If you are in charge at a large international company organisation, institution, government or public employment service, contact  sales@janzz.technology and we will assist you with our unique AI based talent matching tool.

How can JANZZon! help your data?

To structure large amounts of data, JANZZ.technology combines its ontology (JANZZ.on!) with deep learning models.

JANZZ ontology is the largest and multilingual in the area of occupation data. Therefore, if you are a company, organisation, government/public employment service and would like to empower your data, please write to sales@janzz.technology.

Is reskilling and upskilling the real cure for today’s skills shortage?

Digitalization, automation and AI pose a great threat to today’s job market that requires constantly changing skills. However, some of the skills are not missing due to the evolution of technology, but rather due to a loss of attractiveness. This is especially the case for positions with an unusually high number of vacancies or such that remain vacant for a long time.

 

According to the Swiss Skills Shortage Index, “a skills shortage exists if there are more vacancies than job seekers in an occupation.” Last year, the Adecco Group compared in its Swiss Job Market Index job advertisements with the number of job seekers registered by the Vacancies and Job Market Statistics Information System (AVAM), which yielded the 2019 Swiss Skills Shortage Ranking.

As in previous years, in 2019 engineering occupations such as structural and electronics engineers are most wanted by Swiss employers. They are followed by technical occupations, fiduciary and IT professions. The ranking further indicates that compared to 2016, when the measurement was conducted for the first time, the skills shortage in 2019 is 22% higher across Switzerland. [1]

There are many reasons for the skills shortage. The rapidly changing skills requirements caused by technological innovation are believed to have the most profound impact on the risks of skills mismatch and shortage. Similarly, Hay’s Global Skills Index 2019/20 reported the highest talent mismatch since the index’ launch in 2012 and they, too, believe that technological development is one of the main contributing factors [2].

On the part of businesses, many companies facing the threat of talent shortages, which might damage their commercial success, prepare themselves for new technologies by upskilling their existing workforce, investing in training, encouraging lifelong learning and raising the retirement age.

There is no doubt that continuous upskilling throughout a career will become the new normal, but is this really the key to overcoming skills shortage? If it were, how come that the situation looks as if things are going in the opposite direction?

Another report published by a Swiss online job portal and Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) provides further insight into the Swiss job market. The report compared more than 100,000 job advertisements with the number of clicks on Swiss job portals and, thus, reveals people’s interests in specific jobs in a more direct fashion.

In the German-speaking part of Switzerland, professions in administration, HR, consulting, sales and customer services, marketing, communication, and executive boards received more interest (clicks) than the job advertisements posted. However, jobs in areas like production, telecommunications, construction or nursing received less interest (clicks) compared to the job advertisements posted. [3] This suggests that economic incentives as well as social recognition are becoming increasingly important for people when it comes to choosing a profession.

Last year, there were over 6000 professional care vacancies in Switzerland. This number has doubled compared to five years ago.[4] Reporting on the healthcare workforce supply and demand in Switzerland shows that care workers graduating in the near future will only cover 56% of the demand until 2025.[5]

In the case described above, the problem doesn’t have to do with up-or reskilling. It is rather about the ways in which more people – especially younger ones – can be encouraged to pursue a career in jobs that are considered less attractive. What is even worse, evidence shows that due to bad working conditions (e.g. little income, long working hours, too much stress) a large share of young people has switched their working field either right after their apprenticeship or after a mere few years of professional experience. This includes professions in childcare, hospitality, catering services and handcrafts.

Today everyone is talking about automation, digitalization, AI, upskilling and reskilling. We must remember that there are still many jobs that are unlikely to be automated but essential to our daily lives. And these jobs are losing in popularity. It is important for governments and education systems to take action on increasing awareness and to promote such professions. As written in the OECD Employment Outlook 2019, the “future of work is in our hands and will largely depend on the policy decisions countries make.”

For almost a decade, JANZZ.technology has been observing and working with many labor markets worldwide. Our latest product JANZZdashboard! creates transparent and easy to understand gap analyses of the labor market. This will give governments a clear idea of which skills are available and which ones should be expanded or redeveloped. To learn more about our solutions please write now to sales@janzz.technology

 

 

 

[1] Spring Professional. 2019. Swiss skills shortage index 2019. URL: https://www.swissinfo.ch/resource/blob/45398900/860c466e7be6e615ba922c24c9edf5ee/adecco-study-data.pdf [21.01.2020]

[2] Rachel Muller-Heyndyk. 2019. New technology causing skills gaps and stagnant wages. URL : https://hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/new-technology-causing-skills-gaps-and-stagnant-wages [21.01.2020]

[3] Robert Mayer. 2019. Die meisten Stelleninserate, die geringste Nachfrage. URL : https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wirtschaft/in-diesen-berufen-herrscht-ein-mangel-an-fachkraeften/story/18953945 [21.01.2020]

[4] Albert Steck. 2019. Offene Stellen auf Höchststand. URL: http://jobs.nzz.ch/news/6/arbeitswelt/artikel/421/offene-stellen-auf-hochststand [21.01.2020]

[5] Veronica DeVore. 2016. When caring for patients gets competitive. URL : https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/showing-off-skills_when-caring-for-patients-gets-competitive/42524090 [21.01.2020]