Computers & Industrial Engineering 144 (2020) 106463

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers & Industrial Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/caie

Industrial human resource management optimization based on skills and T

characteristics
DongSeop Leea, , ChangKuk Ahnb
⁎

a
Artificial Intelligence Center, Samsung Research, Samsung Elec., Seoul, South Korea
b
Human Resource Department, Samsung Research, Samsung Elec., Seoul, South Korea

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: In an increasingly diversified and competitive job market, not only is seeking the right job more challenging but
Human resource management also for companies, finding and holding on to the right persons is becoming the competitive edge necessary to
Job/career matching outperform and grow. Skill preference and personality traits are key factors used to find the right candidate and
Artificial intelligence previously many of this process have been conducted manually. The characteristics of job candidate and core-
Decision support
workers in companies are represented by Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The main reason for considering
Optimization
personality trait is to find and hire job candidates having the same trait as the company’s core employees’ hard
working and loyal employees so that adapting to company culture and environment does not become difficult
process for new hires. In this paper, the framework named Artificial Intelligence based Design platform (AID) has
been applied for career matching based on companies’ and candidates’ skill preferences and MBTI with con-
straint of working location. The paper investigates three conceptual matching optimizations including (1) skill
preferences, (2) skill preferences under working area constraint, (3) skill and MBTI preference with working area
constraint. The numerical results show that the proposed method produces higher quality matching when
compared to the conventional methods.

1. Introduction
In hiring, finding the suitable job seeker necessitates going beyond
the candidates’ past experience. The traditional online recruiting ap-
plications normally use only simple Boolean operations comparing the
basic requirement of jobs offered by employers. In addition, the lack of
job counselor in public services sector does not allow counting for the
huge amount of profiles from job seeker/candidates and industrial or-
ganizations. In matching system, statistical formulas are commonly
used even though they cannot guarantee appropriate recommendation.
An ill matched job recruits is costly to the individual and the industrial
organization as it evidently results in low productivity, early separa-
tion, time loss, and accumulation of search costs. To prevent mismatch,
a more accurate systematic frameworks is required that can match the
right job candidate to the right company for as many candidates as
possible with lowered search costs. The matching system also needs to
account for both vocational/skill preferences and characteristics of both
organization and job candidates to increase performance/individual
productivity and lower resign rate.
In both economics and psychology, prior research has analyzed the
relationship between personality (anxiety and optimism) and
occupation (Spector, Jex, & Chen, 1995) and vocational/skill pre-
ferences (Tokar, Fischer, & Mezydlo Subich, 1998). Psychologists also
have investigated job seekers’ decisions to choose congruent organiza-
tions or occupations (Chapman, Uggerslev, Carroll, Piasentin, & Jones,
2005). Judge and Cable (Judge & Cable, 1997) investigate the link
between job seekers’ personalities and their ‘fit’ with the attributes of
the organizations (such as innovation, risk-taking, cooperation, and
team orientation) to which they apply. Fredriksson, Hensvik, and Skans
discover that job match quality in terms of initial wage, wage growth
and separation rate, is linked to the personality traits as well as the
cognitive abilities of new hires (Fredriksson, Hensvik, & Skans, 2015).
Bhat has shown how the correlation between person and job impacts
employee’s performance (Ting & Varathan, 2018). Pearson correlation
function has been used to analyze 108 employee survey data at J&K
Bank Ltd. Ting and Varathan have used user-generated Facebook data
(albums, wall posts, number of friends/ groups/ comments/ photos) for
Big Five Model (measures the big five personality traits) linked to six
software engineering positions including system engineer, programmer
and with other 4 job positions (Bhat, 2014). However, existing studies
have three main limits; firstly applying specific job areas including
bank, software engineering, and project management are not generally

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: ds.james.lee@samsung.com (D. Lee), michael.ahn@samsung.com (C. Ahn).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2020.106463
Received 13 December 2019; Received in revised form 25 March 2020; Accepted 6 April 2020
Available online 11 April 2020
0360-8352/ © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
D. Lee and C. Ahn
applicable; secondly previous literatures focus only on the job seekers
personality traits and overlooks the traits a company needs; finally,
considering statistical formulas such as mean square errors, Pearson
correlations analysis, etc. these studies primarily focused on dis-
covering the positive or negative relationship between personality and
job features.
In this paper, three main features are analyzed skill preferences,
characteristics, and working area for both industrial organization and
job candidates. The characteristics of both candidates and companies
are represented by Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) (Myers, 1995).
The characteristics of industrial organization can be measured from
their hard working and loyal core employees so that future employees’
characteristics are similar to the core workings. This can foster easy
adaptation to the environment/policy of a company and eventually
increase productivity and lower turnover rates and liabilities.
There are several researches for matching and assignment problems
in Industrial Organization literature; Sonia and Puri (Sonia, 2008) that
solves resource assignment problem by giving jobs primary and sec-
ondary priorities with a linear programming model for the amount of
resources. There are specific linear models developed for assignment
model such as Hungarian Method (Hochstattler, Jin, & Nickel, 2005),
Stable Marriage Problem (Garrett, 2005), Weighted Matching Problem
(Drake & Hougardy, 2003), Stable Roommates Problem (Irwing &
Manlove, 2002) and Hospital/Residents (Abraham, Irwing, & Manlove,
2007). Altay et al. applied heuristic method such as Genetic Algorithm
with statistical models such as least squares, Manhattan distance,
Pearson correlation to assign the right student with the right skill which
the company required (Altay, Kayakutlu, & Topcu, 2010). In this paper,
the problem proposed by Altay et al. has been considered for skill
preferences and resolved using in-house solver named Artificial In-
telligence based Design platform (AID). The numerical results obtained
by AID are compared to the statistical methods proposed by Altay et al.
in terms of matching performance, its stability and computational cost.
In this paper, three methods including statistical and heuristic
methods have been investigated through three conceptual applications
with increment of complexity; skill preference matching, skill pre-
ference matching with working location constraint, and skill and MBTI
preference matching with location constraint.
The rest of paper is organized as follows; Section 2 presents the
method that applied to solve the matching problem between job can-
didates and organizations. The rationale of problem is defined in
Section 3. In Section 4, three matching applications are conducted using
the conventional methods and AID. The numerical results obtained by
the conventional method and AID are discussed and compared in terms
of the performance, performance stability and computational coast in
Section 5. Finally, the conclusion is presented in Section 6.
2. Methods
In this paper, an in-house software named Artificial Intelligence
based Design platform (AID) is implemented for the optimization of
skill preference matching, skill preference matching with working area
constraint, and skill & MBTI matching with working area constraints for
job candidates and companies.
2.1. Artificial Intelligence based Design platform (AID)
AID has been developed to solve complex real-world design pro-
blems as shown in Fig. 1. It consists of four modules including data pre-
processer, data analyzer, optimizer and modeler. For importing the data
types, it can be a real-time data through API and/or the big-data from
the private, Social Networking Services (SNS) and government. In data
pre-processing module (①), it performs Exploratory Data Analysis
(EDA) including statistical distribution/interpretation (count, mean,
standard deviation, minimum and maximum values), cluster analysis
and correlation analysis for predefined factors. In addition, the data
2
Computers & Industrial Engineering 144 (2020) 106463
pre-processer evaluates the quality of the database by checking missing
data. It cleans the abnormal data with predefined threshold (mean
value μ + threshold σ) and correction operation using interpolation or
predefined value (μ as default). The revised dataset can directly be
transferred to data modeler module (④) that generates either mathe-
matical model or black box for regression or classification using ma-
chine/deep learning. The model generated by the module ④ can be used
for optimization (③) using Genetic Algorithm (GA) (Deb, 2001; Lee,
Gonzalez, & Periaux, 2010) or Mixed Integer Programming (MILP)
(Bemporad & Morari, 1999; Williams & Brailsford, 1996) to minimize
the pre-defined objective functions in terms of single and multi-objec-
tive manner. Finally, AID can provide an appropriate and rational de-
cision for complex decision-making problems.
In this paper, AID is applied to analyze the data obtained by in-
dustrial organizations and job candidates and perform matching opti-
mization. It starts with data evaluation and then performs statistical
distribution analysis for skill, MBTI and working area for both organi-
zation and job candidates as shown in Sections 3.2–3.5. And it conducts
an optimization to assign the right candidate to the right organization
based on skill and MILP. The objective of this application is to let all
companies have the right job candidates based on their skill preference
with possible working area. AID as a decision support system acts to
maximize the matching rate between job seekers and companies. The
details of companies’ and job candidates’ preference will be described
in following Section 3.
2.2. Mixed integer linear programming (MILP)
MILP is a modification to a linear program (LP) in which some
variables are constrained to take only integer values. Constraints on
such variables enable the inclusion of discrete decisions in the optimi-
zation (Bemporad & Morari, 1999; Williams & Brailsford, 1996). MILP
can be expressed in mathematical terms as shown in Eq. (1);
minf T (x ) (1)
Aineq x bineq
Aeq x = beq
subject to
lb x ub
x = int
where f T (x ) represents the objective function including f is a
column vector of constants, and x is the column vector of unknowns in
the bounds between lb lower and ub upper bound.
In this paper, MILP is used to maximize a perfect matching as a
single-objective design problem considering two different groups’ pre-
ferences.
3. Problem rationale
The problem considered in this paper is to match the final year
student’s skill and company’s need based on the industrial engineering
subjects, especially student’s graduation thesis as described in Altay
et al. (2010). Istanbul Technical University (ITU) Industrial Engineering
Department and Istanbul Chamber of Industry have decided to colla-
borate on solving the industrial problems with the help of students.
Each year senior students of the university are assigned to industrial
companies to provide practice for the engineering candidates and
providing support for the companies. The details of the background can
be found in reference (Altay et al., 2010). The subjects interested for
both parties are selected by the Department of Industrial Engineering
and then companies and students fill their preferences. The original
paper considered real-world data from 54 companies and 84 students.
3.1. Data generation
The database for skill preferences for company and job candidate is
D. Lee and C. Ahn Computers & Industrial Engineering 144 (2020) 106463

Fig. 1. Artificial intelligence based design platform (AID).

Fig. 2. Data creation using LHS.

based on the real-data as shown in reference (Altay et al., 2010; Lee, • Quality Management. (QM)
Kim, & Na, 2018). The real-data consists of 54 companies and 84 job • Human Resources Management. (HR)
candidates (students). In a real-world matching problem, the data is • Ergonomics. (Er)
much bigger and more complex. So, the preferences DB has been ex- • Finance/Investments Analysis. (FI)
tended to seven hundred companies and one thousand job candidates • Supply Chain Management/Customer Relation-ship Management.
by randomly sampling from the original data. And also MBTI and (SCRM)
working area data (post codes) are randomly generated and added to • Knowledge Management. (K)
the new DB as shown in Fig. 2. For the random sampling process, LHS • Strategic Managements. (S)
(Latin Hypercube Sampling) method is used besides the normal dis-
tributed random sampling that LHS can generate well-distributed There are two kinds of vector filled by companies and students as
samples without oversampling (Iman, Davenport, & Zeigler, 1980). show in Table 1. The preferred skill subject will be marked by 1 or
During data generation process, four parameters including three MBTI higher otherwise 0.
values and one location value (post code) are added to company DB where PreC and PreS represent the skill preferences for companies
while three parameters including one MBTI and two parameters for and the university students.
post code and transferability values are added to job candidate DB. There are three types of preference vector for companies as shown
in Table 2;
3.2. Skill preference vector
• Company-A (C-A) looks for a student having a skill on the subject
The subjects are chosen from the list of subjects declared by
Professors at ITU for that year (Altay et al., 2010). In 2007 –2008
academic year, preference vectors are derived from the global list of Table 1
Preference vectors by companies and students.
nine subjects shown below:
PreC IMC PMC QMC HRC ErC FIC SCRMC KC SC

• Inventory and Materials Management. (IM)

• Process Management. (PM)
PreS IMS PMS QMS HRS ErS FIS SCRMS KS SS

3
D. Lee and C. Ahn Computers & Industrial Engineering 144 (2020) 106463

Table 2 Table 4
Example of companies’ preference vector. MBTI description.
Subjects IMC PMC QMC HRC ErC FIC SCRMC KC SC MBTI characteristics Description (e.g.)

C-A 5 0 3 2 0 1 0 4 0 ISTJ Responsible/Executors (e.g. Inspector)

C-B 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 ISFJ Dedicated /Stewards (e.g. Protector)
C-C 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ISTP Nimble/Pragmatics (e.g. Operator)
ISFP Practical/Custodians (e.g. Composer)
INFJ Insightful/Motivators (e.g. Counselor)
INTJ Visionary/Strategist (e.g. Mastermind)
Table 3 INFP Inspired/Crusaders (e.g. Healer)
INTP Expansive/Analyzers (e.g. Architect)
Example of students’ preference vector.
ESTP Dynamic/Mavericks (e.g. Promoter)
Subjects IMS PMS QMS HRS ErS FIS SCRMS KS SS ESFP Enthusiastic/Improvisers (e.g. Performer)
ESTJ Efficient/Drivers (e.g. Field Marshall)
S-A 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 ESFJ Committed/Builders (e.g. Teacher)
S-B 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ENFP Impassioned/Catalysts (e.g. Champion)
S-C 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 ENTP Innovative/Explorers (e.g. Inventor)
ENFJ Engaging/Mobilizers (e.g. Provider)
ENTJ Strategic/Directors (e.g. Supervisor)

Where I stands for Introverts, E (Extroverts), S (Sensors), N (Intuitives), T

Finance/Investments Analysis (FI) and then in priority order of K,
HR, QM and IM.
• Company-B’s (C-B) needs a student who can handle mainly Quality
Management (QM) and partially on Knowledge Management (K).
• Company-C (C-C) needs a student who is capable for any of nine
subjects.
There are three types of preference vector for students (job candi-
dates) as shown in Table 3;
• Student-A (S-A) has the skill on the subject Knowledge Management
(K).
• Student-B’s (S-B) preference is on two subjects Inventory and
Materials Management (IM) and Process Management (PM).
• Student-C (S-C) has two preferences; the major subject on Human
Resources Management (HR) and the second subject on Supply
Chain Management/Customer Relationship Management (SCRM).
The skill preferences distributions for companies and students are
compared as shown in Fig. 3. There is a good balance on the subjects
Quality Mgmt. (QM) and Human Resource Mgmt. (HR) while there is
the lack of students on Inventory and Material Mgmt. (IM) and Ergo-
nomics (Er). There are slightly enough students on Process Mgmt. (PM),
SCM & CRM (SCRM), Knowledge Mgmt. (K). However, the problem is
that there are too many students on the subject Strategic Mgmt. (S). If
there are equivalent number of students and companies that hold same
skill preferences, then there will be a one to one match, however if
number of students are larger than the number of positions, the stu-
dents will be hired according to secondary skill perfect match or will
not be assigned to a company.
(Thinkers), F (Feelers), J (Judgers), P (Perceivers).
3.3. MBTIC preference vector
The paper also considers 16 types of MBTI (Myers, 1995; Pittenger,
1993; Thompson & Borrello, 2016) representing the characteristics of
job candidates and core-employees at companies as shown in below
Table 4;
The main reason for considering of MBTI is to provide a matching
criterion other than skill preferences. It is assumed that character-
istics of an organization consist of three MBTIs obtained from core-
employees who are hard-working and loyal to their company. And
one MBTI value will represent for the personality trait of job candi-
date. In this paper, MBTI of both companies and job candidates are
randomly generated. It is assumed that there is a good match when
the value of MBTI of job candidate is the same as one of company’s
MBTI values. Figs. 4 and 5 show the MBTI distribution of companies
and job candidates.
3.4. Working area and transferability
Five post-codes are considered to represent the location of compa-
nies and living area of job candidates. Fig. 6(a) shows the location
distributions between companies and job candidates. It can be seen that
43% of job candidates are able to work at different location as shown in
Fig. 6(b).
The transferability (Trans) of working area for job candidates is
represented by binary numbers; zero (Trans = 0 : impossible) indicates
that a job candidate cannot move to the location of the company while
one (Trans = 1 : possible) means that the job candidate is able to
transfer residence near to the location of company.
The working/living area and transferability are physical factors so
the optimization system firstly evaluates them and then conducts the
skill preference and MBTI matching.

3.5. Definition of skill perfect match and secondary skill perfect match

The aim of this match is to allocate job candidates to companies as

Fig. 3. Skill preference distributions of companies and students.
many as possible so that all seven hundred companies can hire the right
job candidate who can fulfill the company’s requirements while con-
sidering their personality trait. The aim of this system is to maximize
the matching rate allocating the right job candidates. To do so, two
matching types are defined; (1) skill perfect match: the job candidate
(J1) is allocated to the company (C) having the same skill preference as
shown in Table 5 and (2) secondary skill perfect match: allocating the
job candidate (J2) to the company (C) having the skill FI.

4
D. Lee and C. Ahn Computers & Industrial Engineering 144 (2020) 106463

Fig. 4. Three MBTI distributions for companies.

Table 5
Definition of perfect matching.
Subjects IM PM QM HR Er FI SCRM K S

C 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 0
J1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
J2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

cases. In this paper, it is assumed that the skill preference matching is

more important feature than characteristics matching based on MBTI.
This matching process will perform when the location constraint is
satisfied.

4. HRM (Human Resource Management) optimization

The ideal target of this paper is to develop a method that can

Fig. 5. MBTI distribution for job candidates.
The job candidate (J2) would be the best when none of students
cannot fulfill the company (C)’s the priority skill preference on the
subject QM. In this case, the matching system should assign the student
(J2) to the company (C) since it would be the better choice than no
human resource. It is the same to the job candidate (J2) that choosing
company (C) is better than no job opportunity. This matching is called
as a second skill perfect match. The mismatch is defined when the
match does not fit to either the perfect or second perfect matching
maximize the number of candidates and company job match. In pre-
vious research, skill preference was only counted for matching and the
numerical results showed that MPMA produced the best performance
when compared to the conventional statistical formulas such as Least
Squares (LS), Manhattan Distance (MD) and Inverse Pearson
Correlation (IPC) (Lee et al., 2018). Fig. 7 shows the comparison of
matching quality obtained by LS, MD and IPC. In this paper, LS and IPC
methods are considered as a conventional method and numerical results
obtained by them will be compared to the results from MPMA.
Three matching optimization are conducted in following Sections
4.2–4.4; the first optimization test case is only to maximize skill

Fig. 6. (a) Location distributions for companies and job candidates (left), (b) job candidates’ transferability (right).

5
D. Lee and C. Ahn Computers & Industrial Engineering 144 (2020) 106463

Test case 1, Skill preference matching optimization to minimize

mismatch while maximizing skill preference matching:
F = min(fskill (Cck , Jsk )) (2)

subject to {
1 c 700
1 s 1000
Test case 2, Skill preference matching optimization with location
constrain to minimize mismatch while maximizing skill preference
matching t:
F = min(fskill (Cck , Jsk )) (3)
1 c 700
subject to 1 s 1000
Pcodec = =Pcode s orTrans = =1
Test case 3, Skill & MBTI preference matching optimization with
location constraint to minimize mismatch while maximizing skill and
Fig. 7. Matching quality obtained by LS, MD and IPC. MBTI preferences matching:
F = min(fskill (Cck , Jsk ) + fMBTI (Cck, Jsk )) (4)
1 c 700
preference matching, the second optimization case considers a skill
subject to 1 s 1000
preference matching maximization with working location constraint.
Pcodec = =Pcode s orTrans = =1
The final optimization test case considers the skill and MBTI preference
where fskill and fMBTI represent the objective functions for skill
matching optimization with location constraint. The first and second
preference and MBTI matching in terms of Cck and Jsk . Cck and Jsk re-
optimization test cases are to maximize the perfect and secondary skill
present the cth company’s and the sth job candidate’s skill and MBTI
matching as explained in Section 3.5. In each test case, the match
preferences. k represents the matching parameters including skill and
quality obtained by MPMA, LS and IPC will be compared.
MBTI. C (C = 700) and S (S = 1,000) represent the total number of
companies and students for matching.
In this paper, three optimization fitness functions are applied;
4.1. Matching optimization process
Least Squares (LS);
There are three aspects to be match including skill preferences, C S K

MBTI and working/living location. The system for both statistical for-
mulas and MPMA will primarily filter the job candidate who has the
same post-code or is able to move to different location (Trans = 1). The
system will perform skill preference matching if the location constraint
is satisfied. Then the system evaluates the job candidate’s MBTI as
shown in Fig. 8. In this case, the system should choose the appropriate
job candidate among many who has both right skill preference and
MBTIs.
Matching optimization objective functions are defined as shown in
Eqs. (2)–(4);
(Cck Jsk )2
c=1 s =1 k =1 (5)
where K value will be nine for both job candidate and company in Test
Case 1 counting only skill set. In Test case 2, K for job candidate and
company will be ten and eleven respectively. Test case 3 will consider
twelve and thirteen.
LS function is a standard approach in regression analysis and is to
calculate the sum of the squares of residuals made in the results of every
single subject. Lower LS value indicates the better matching between
company and student.

Fig. 8. Matching optimization process.

6
D. Lee and C. Ahn Computers & Industrial Engineering 144 (2020) 106463

Inverse Pearson Correlation (IPC); 4.3. Skill preference matching with location constraint
C S
× T The optimization is to maximize skill preference matching by using
c=1 s =1 (6) LS and MPMA with location constraint. Eqs. (5)–(7) are applied to Eq.
2 (3). Numerical results obtained by LS, IPS and MPMA are shown in
where
K 2 K
= K( ck ) ( ck )
k=1 k=1 Fig. 10. It can be seen that MPMA produces the perfect matching by
K K 2 85% while LS and IPC generating 27% and 20% of perfect matching. All
T=K 2
sk sk candidates of LS, IPC and MPMA are satisfied for location constraint.
k=1 k=1 Implementation of location constraint reduces the performance of
MPMA and LS by 5% and 36% when compared to the Test Case 1. It
K K K
=K means that MPMA method is stable with optimization constraint when
ck ck sk
k=1 k=1 k=1 compared to the method LS. For the secondary perfect matching,
MPMA, LS and IPC produce 8.7% and 11.4% and 1.4% respectively.
The reason why Pearson Correlation function is inversed is to MPMA cannot find the right job candidates for 45 companies (6.4%)
minimize the fitness value. Pearson correlation is to measure of the while LS and IPC produces more than 61.7% and 78.3% failure (432
correlation between two variables and vectors. Higher Pearson and 548 companies with no right job candidate). It can also be seen that
Correlation value represents higher correlation between two variables. MPMA produces almost 58% higher perfect skill matching with almost
In this case, the lower IPC value indicates the higher correlation be- ten times lower failure when compared to LS.
tween company and job candidate.
Multiple Preferences Matching Algorithm (MPMA); 4.4. Skill & MBTI preference matching with location constraint
C S K
(MP cskWV + (Cck Jsk ) 2 ) The optimization is to maximize skill and MBTI preference matching
c=1 s =1 k =1 (7) by using LS, IPC and MPMA. Eqs. (5)–(7) are applied to Eq. (4). Nu-
where MP cskWV represents the vector of weight values including rewards merical results obtained by LS, IPC and MPMA are shown in Fig. 11. It
and penalties for the preference matching of both skills and MBTI. can be seen that MPMA produces the perfect matching by 85% while LS
MPMA is consisting of two functions; Least Squares (LS) minimizing and IPC generating 24% and 18% of perfect matching. All candidates of
the differences between job candidates and companies while inducing LS, IPC and MPMA are satisfied for location constraint. Implementation
the optimizer to look for the best skill and/or MBTI preference of location constraint reduces the performance of MPMA and LS by 5%
matching. The reward of MP cskWV will be applied to the fitness function and 36% when compared to the Test Case 1. It can be noticed that
if the condition is satisfied for preference matchings otherwise, the MPMA method maintains its performance as Test Case 2; skill pre-
penalty will be applied. Therefore, MPMA can encourage the optimizer ference matching optimization with location constraint. However the
to have the best skill and MBTI matching. perfect matching performance of LS and IPC is reduced by 3% and 2%
The matching simulation is conducted in the following environ- when compared to the numerical results in Test Case 2. For the sec-
ment; Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20 GHz with 16.GB RAM. ondary perfect matching, MPMA, LS and IPC produce 8.9%, 10.7%,
12% respectively. MPMA cannot find the right job candidates for 43
companies (6.1%) while LS and IPC produces more than 65.7% and
4.2. Skill preference matching
70% failure (460 and 489 companies with no right job candidate). For
MBTI matching, MPMA allocates the right job candidates who have
The optimization is to maximize skill preference matching by using
both right skill (either perfect or secondary perfect matching) and MBTI
IPS, LS and MPMA while minimizing mismatch cases. Eqs. (5)–(7) are
to 47% of companies while LS and IPC fulfils 22% and 18% of com-
applied to Eq. (2). Numerical results obtained by LS, IPS and MPMA are
panies. It shows that MPMA is efficient enough to produce an appro-
shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen that MPMA produces the perfect matching
priate matching for both skill and MBTI preference with location con-
by 90% while LS and IPS generating 63% and 17.7% of perfect matching
straint.
respectively. For the secondary perfect matching, MPMA and LS produce
5.4% and 11.7%. MPMA cannot find the right job candidates for 30
5. Discussion
companies (4.3%) while LS and IPS produces more than 25% and 80%
failure (177 and 576 companies without right job candidates). It can be
Even though, MPMA produces higher matching rate, it is necessary
seen that MPMA produces almost 30% higher perfect skill matching with
to discuss following three points; match quality; global search; con-
six times lower failure when compared to LS.
trollability (control of skill and MBTI matching rate).
For the first discussion point, the matching quality can be described
in terms of matching rate (average performance, μ) and its sensitivity
(standard deviation, σ). The reason why lower sensitivity is desirable is
that the matching rate will be steady despite small or big variations in
optimization. For instance, the matching rate will be fluctuated if
matching sensitivity is high and this will not allow implementation in
the real-world case. Table 6 compares the average matching perfor-
mance μ and its sensitivity σ obtained by LS and MPMA. It can be seen
that MPMA can generate 92% higher average matching rate with 95%
stability over Test Cases 1–3 when compared to LS.
For the second discussion point, an appropriate matching system
needs to produce high performance as well as lower computational cost.
In previous paper, LS was about 44% faster when compared to MPMA
for original matching test case considering 54 companies and 84 job
candidates’ preferences (Lee et al., 2018). In this case, MPMA is even
Fig. 9. Skill preference matching using LS and MPMA (Failed represents mis- faster than LS and IPC when the design optimization problem is getting
match cases). complex as shown in Fig. 12. However, it is to be questioned whether

7
D. Lee and C. Ahn Computers & Industrial Engineering 144 (2020) 106463

Fig. 10. Skill preference matching with location constraint: skill (a) left), location (b) right).

Fig. 11. Skill and MBTI preference matching with location constraint.

Table 6 et al., 2016; Zhang & Hong, 2019) and/or Nash-game (Periaux,
Comparison of skill matching results obtained by LS and MPMA. Gonzalez, & Lee, 2015) as a future works. Especially cuckoo search has
Case\Results Matching (LS) Failed (LS) Matching (MPMA) Failed (MPMA)
advantages in global search ability, few selected parameters, excellent
search path, and ability of solving multi-objective problems.
Test Case 1 523 177 670 30 In this paper, it is assumed that organization would apply higher
Test Case 2 268 432 655 45 priority on skill preference matching than MBTI characteristics for new
Test Case 3 240 460 657 43
μ 343.7 356.3 660.7 (+92%) 39.3 (−89%)
employee recruitment. On the other hand, the company may focus on
σ 155.9 155.9 8.1 (−95%) 8.1 (−95%) MBTI besides skill preference for internal HR rearrangement. In this
case, it would be desirable to control the match ratio between skill and
※ Matching includes the perfect and secondary perfect matching. MBTI so the organization can control the quality of human resource in
terms of skill-wise and/or characteristics-wise. Fig. 13 shows that
MPMA can adjust the match ratio between skill and MBTI with different
weight factors for skill and MBTI. When lower weight is applied on
MBTI than skill preference, the numerical results show the exact same
solutions as Test Case 3. MPMA allocates the right job candidates who
have both right skill (either perfect or secondary perfect matching) and
MBTI up to 61% of companies with higher weight on MBTI.

6. Conclusion

The conventional methods especially statistical formulas and the

Fig. 12. Computational cost (in seconds) comparison obtained by LS and
MPMA.
match results obtained by MPMA are global solutions. To improve
global search ability of matching algorithm, the authors are considering
hybridizing GA with cuckoo search (Kundra & Sadawarti, 2015; Guo
alternative method named MPMA are demonstrated and implemented
to solve three matching problems considering skill and characteristics
of both industrial organization and job candidates. Numerical results
obtained by AID with MPMA and statistical models are compared in
terms of the matching quality and computational efficiency. The paper
clearly shows the benefit of using AID with MPMA producing higher
match quality and skill and characteristics match ratio controllability.
For future works, the authors would focus on global search ability to
minimize mismatch rate. For instance, Cuckoo search will be

8
D. Lee and C. Ahn
Fig. 13. Skill and MBTI matching with different MPcskWV .
considered. For accurate characteristics analysis, other personality trait
measurement methods including Wonderlic, Hogan and Big Five
Analysis will be investigated.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
DongSeop Lee: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing
- original draft, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. ChangKuk
Ahn: Visualization, Writing - original draft.
References
Abraham, D. J., Irwing, R. W., & Manlove, D. F. (2007). Two algorithms for the student-
project allocation problem. Journal of Discrete Algorithm, 5, 73–90.
Altay, A., Kayakutlu, G., & Topcu, Y. I. (2010). Win-win match using a genetic algorithm.
Applied Mathematical Modelling, 34, 2749–2762.
Bemporad, A., & Morari, M. (1999). Control of systems integrating logic dynamics, and
constraints. Automatica, 35, 407–427.
Bhat, Z. H. (2014). Job matching: The key to performance. International Journal of
Research in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, 2(4), 257–269.
Chapman, D., Uggerslev, K., Carroll, S., Piasentin, K., & Jones, D. (2005). Applicant at-
traction to organizations and job choice: A meta-analytic review of the correlates of
recruiting outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 928–944.
Deb, K. (2001). Multi-objective optimization using evolutionary algorithms. Wiley & Sons.
Drake, D. E., & Hougardy, S. (2003). A simple approximation algorithm for the weighted
matching problem. Information Processing Letters, 85(4), 211–213.
Fredriksson, P., Hensvik, C., & Skans, O. (2015). Mismatch of talent: Evidence on match
quality, entry wages, and job mobility. Discussion Paper No. 9585. Bonn: Institute for
Labor Research (IZA).
Garrett, D. et al. (2005). Genetic algorithms for the sailor assignment problem. In: Genetic
and evolutionary computation conference GECCO 2005 proceedings, Washington,
USA, pp. 1921–1928, 25-29 July.
Guo, J., Sun, Z., Tang, H., Jia, X., Wang, S., Yan, X., et al. (2016). Hybrid optimization
algorithm of particle swarm optimization and cuckoo search for preventive main-
tenance period optimization. Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society, 2016, 1516271.
Hochstattler, W., Jin, H., & Nickel, R. (2005). The Hungarian method in a mixed matching
Computers & Industrial Engineering 144 (2020) 106463
market, Technical Report, Fern Universitat in Hagen, Germany.
Iman, R. L., Davenport, J. M., & Zeigler, D. K. (1980). Latin hyper-cube sampling (program
user's guide). Department of Energy, Sandia Laboratories: Texas Tech University.
Irwing, R. W., & Manlove, D. F. (2002). The stable roommates problem with ties. Journal
of Algorithms, 43, 85–105.
Judge, T., & Cable, D. (1997). Applicant personality, organizational culture, and orga-
nization attraction. Personnel Psychology, 50(2), 359–394.
Kundra, H., & Sadawarti, H. (2015). Hybrid algorithm of cuckoo search and particle
swarm optimization for natural terrain feature extraction. Research Journal of
Information Technology, 7, 58–69.
Lee, D. S., Gonzalez, L. F., & Periaux, J. (2010). UAS mission path planning system
(MPPS) using hybrid-game coupled to multi-objective design optimizer. Journal of
Dynamic System, Measurement and Control - Trans. ASME, 132(4), 1–10.
Lee, D. S., Kim, M. H., & Na, I. K. (2018). Artificial intelligence based career matching.
Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, 35(6), 6061–6070.
Myers, B. (1995). Gifts differing: Understanding personality type. Mountain View, CA:
Davies-Black Publishing (ISBN 978-0-89106-074-1).
Periaux, J., Gonzalez, F., & Lee, D. S. (2015). Evolutionary optimization and game strategies
for advanced multi-disciplinary design. Netherlands: Springer.
Pittenger, D. J. (1993). Measuring the MBTI and coming up short. Journal of Career
Planning and Employment. 54(1), 48–52.
Sonia, M. C. Puri (2008). Two stage time minimizing assignment problem. Omega, 36(5),
730–740.
Spector, P., Jex, S., & Chen, P. (1995). Relations of incumbent affect-related personality
traits with incumbent and objective measures of characteristics of jobs. Journal of
Organizational Behavior, 16, 59–65.
Thompson, B., & Borrello, G. M. (2016). Construct validity of the Myers-Briggs type in-
dicator. Educational and Psychological Measurement. 46(3), 745–752.
Ting, T. L., & Varathan, K. D. (2018). Job recommendation using Facebook personality
scores. Malaysian Journal of Computer Science, 31(4), 311–331.
Tokar, David M., Fischer, Ann R., & Mezydlo Subich, Linda (1998). Personality and vo-
cational behavior: A selective review of the literature, 1993–1997. Journal of
Vocational Behavior, 53(2), 115–153. https://doi.org/10.1006/jvbe.1998.1660.
Williams, H. P., & Brailsford, S. C. (1996). Computational logic and integer programming,
advances in linear and integer programming. Oxford University Press249–281.
Zhang, Z.-C., & Hong, W.-C. (2019). Electric load forecasting by complete ensemble
empirical model decomposition adaptive noise and support vector regression with
quantum-based dragonfly algorithm. Nonlinear Dynamics, 98, 1107–1136.