Intelligent career planning via stochastic subsampling reinforcement learning.

Journal: Scientific reports
Published Date:

Abstract

Career planning consists of a series of decisions that will significantly impact one's life. However, current recommendation systems have serious limitations, including the lack of effective artificial intelligence algorithms for long-term career planning, and the lack of efficient reinforcement learning (RL) methods for dynamic systems. To improve the long-term recommendation, this work proposes an intelligent sequential career planning system featuring a career path rating mechanism and a new RL method coined as the stochastic subsampling reinforcement learning (SSRL) framework. After proving the effectiveness of this new recommendation system theoretically, we evaluate it computationally by gauging it against several benchmarks under different scenarios representing different user preferences in career planning. Numerical results have demonstrated that our system is superior to other benchmarks in locating promising optimal career paths for users in long-term planning. Case studies have further revealed that our SSRL career path recommendation system would encourage people to gradually improve their career paths to maximize long-term benefits. Moreover, we have shown that the initial state (i.e., the first job) can have a significant impact, positively or negatively, on one's career, while in the long-term view, a carefully planned career path following our recommendation system may mitigate the negative impact of a lackluster beginning in one's career life.

Authors

  • Pengzhan Guo
    Duke Kunshan University, Kunshan, Jiangsu, China.
  • Keli Xiao
    College of Business, Stony Brook University, New York, USA.
  • Zeyang Ye
    Samsung Research America, Mountain View, CA, USA.
  • Hengshu Zhu
    Baidu Inc., Beijing, China.
  • Wei Zhu
    The Second Clinical College of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine Guangzhou 510120 China zhuwei9201@163.com.