Patent Application
20170344555
The present disclosure generally relates to computer technology for solving technical challenges in search queries to data sources. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to the generation of training data for an ideal candidate search ranking model.
The rise of the Internet has occasioned two disparate phenomena: the increase in the presence of social networks, with their corresponding member profiles visible to large numbers of people, and the increase in use of social networks for job searches, both by applicants and by employers. Employers, or at least recruiters attempting to connect applicants and employers, often perform searches on social networks to identify candidates who have qualifications that make them good candidates for whatever job opening they are attempting to fill. The employers or recruiters then can contact these candidates to see if they are interested in applying for the job opening.
Traditional querying of social networks for candidates involves the employer or recruiter entering one or more search terms to manually create the query. A key challenge in talent search is to translate the criteria of a hiring position into a search query that leads to desired candidates. To fulfill this goal, the searcher has to understand which skills are typically required for the position, what are the alternatives, which companies are likely to have such candidates, which schools the candidates are most likely to graduate from, etc. Moreover, the knowledge varies over time. As a result, it is not surprising that even for experienced recruiters, it often requires many searching trials in order to obtain a satisfactory query.
Some embodiments of the technology are illustrated, by way of example and not limitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings.
The present disclosure describes, among other things, methods, systems, and computer program products that individually provide various functionality. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the various aspects of different embodiments of the present disclosure. It will be evident, however, to one skilled in the art, that the present disclosure may be practiced without all of the specific details.
In an example embodiment, a system is provided whereby, given a set of input “ideal” candidates, a search query is built capturing the key information in the candidates' profiles. The query is then used to retrieve and/or rank results. In this manner, a searcher may list one or several examples of good candidates for a given position. For instance, hiring managers or recruiters can utilize profiles of existing members of the team for which the position pertains. In this new paradigm, instead of specifying a complex query capturing the position requirements, the searcher can simply pick up a small set of ideal candidates for the position. The system then builds a query automatically extracted from the input candidates and searches for result candidates based on this built query. In some example embodiments, the automatically constructed query can also be presented to the searcher, which helps explain why a certain result shows up in a search ranking, making the system more transparent to the searcher. Further, the searcher can then interact with the system and have control over the results by modifying the initial query.
It should be noted that the term “ideal” as used throughout the present disclosure is not intended to be any sort of measurement of desirability of a candidate. Rather, a candidate is simply labeled as “ideal” if a searcher has specified the candidate as a basis for the search. In other words, if the searcher feels that the candidate is ideal enough to specify as a basis for the search, then that is enough for the candidate to be considered ideal for the systems and methods described herein. There is no necessity that that the candidate actually “be” ideal, nor any measurement of how ideal a candidate is.
An application program interface (API) server 114 and a web server 116 are coupled to, and provide programmatic and web interfaces respectively to, one or more application servers 118. The application server(s) 118 host one or more applications 120. The application server(s) 118 are, in turn, shown to be coupled to one or more database servers 124 that facilitate access to one or more databases 126. While the application(s) 120 are shown in
Further, while the client-server system 100 shown in
The web client 106 accesses the various applications 120 via the web interface supported by the web server 116. Similarly, the programmatic client 108 accesses the various services and functions provided by the application(s) 120 via the programmatic interface provided by the API server 114.
In some embodiments, any website referred to herein may comprise online content that may be rendered on a variety of devices including, but not limited to, a desktop personal computer (PC), a laptop, and a mobile device (e.g., a tablet computer, smartphone, etc.). In this respect, any of these devices may be employed by a user to use the features of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, a user can use a mobile app on a mobile device (any of the machines 110, 112 and the third party server 130 may be a mobile device) to access and browse online content, such as any of the online content disclosed herein. A mobile server (e.g., API server 114) may communicate with the mobile app and the application server(s) 118 in order to make the features of the present disclosure available on the mobile device.
In some embodiments, the networked system 102 may comprise functional components of a social networking service.
As shown in
An application logic layer may include one or more various application server modules 214, which, in conjunction with the user interface module(s) 212, generate various user interfaces (e.g., web pages) with data retrieved from various data sources in a data layer. In some embodiments, individual application server modules 214 are used to implement the functionality associated with various applications 120 and/or services provided by the social networking service.
As shown in
Once registered, a member may invite other members, or be invited by other members, to connect via the social networking service. A “connection” may constitute a bilateral agreement by the members, such that both members acknowledge the establishment of the connection. Similarly, in some embodiments, a member may elect to “follow” another member. In contrast to establishing a connection, the concept of “following” another member typically is a unilateral operation and, at least in some embodiments, does not require acknowledgement or approval by the member that is being followed. When one member follows another, the member who is following may receive status updates (e.g., in an activity or content stream) or other messages published by the member being followed, or relating to various activities undertaken by the member being followed. Similarly, when a member follows an organization, the member becomes eligible to receive messages or status updates published on behalf of the organization. For instance, messages or status updates published on behalf of an organization that a member is following will appear in the member's personalized data feed, commonly referred to as an activity stream or content stream. In any case, the various associations and relationships that the members establish with other members, or with other entities and objects, are stored and maintained within a social graph in a social graph database 220.
As members interact with the various applications 120, services, and content made available via the social networking service, the members' interactions and behavior (e.g., content viewed, links or buttons selected, messages responded to, etc.) may be tracked, and information concerning the members' activities and behavior may be logged or stored, for example, as indicated in
In some embodiments, the databases 218, 220, and 222 may be incorporated into the database(s) 126 in
Although not shown, in some embodiments, the social networking system 210 provides an API module via which applications 120 and services can access various data and services provided or maintained by the social networking service. For example, using an APL an application may be able to request and/or receive one or more navigation recommendations. Such applications 120 may be browser-based applications 120, or may be operating system-specific. In particular, some applications 120 may reside and execute (at least partially) on one or more mobile devices (e.g., phone or tablet computing devices) with a mobile operating system. Furthermore, while in many cases the applications 120 or services that leverage the API may be applications 120 and services that are developed and maintained by the entity operating the social networking service, nothing other than data privacy concerns prevents the API from being provided to the public or to certain third parties under special arrangements, thereby making the navigation recommendations available to third party applications 128 and services.
Although the search engine 216 is referred to herein as being used in the context of a social networking service, it is contemplated that it may also be employed in the context of any website or online services. Additionally, although features of the present disclosure are referred to herein as being used or presented in the context of a web page, it is contemplated that any user interface view (e.g., a user interface on a mobile device or on desktop software) is within the scope of the present disclosure.
In an example embodiment, when member profiles are indexed, forward search indexes are created and stored. The search engine 216 facilitates the indexing and searching for content within the social networking service, such as the indexing and searching for data or information contained in the data layer, such as profile data (stored, e.g., in the profile database 218), social graph data (stored, e.g., in the social graph database 220), and member activity and behavior data (stored, e.g., in the member activity and behavior database 222). The search engine 216 may collect, parse, and/or store data in an index or other similar structure to facilitate the identification and retrieval of information in response to received queries for information. This may include, but is not limited to, forward search indexes, inverted indexes, N-gram indexes, and so on.
In an example embodiment, the input from the client profile search component 302 includes an identification of one or more ideal candidates for a job opening. This identification may be accomplished in many ways. In some example embodiments, the input may be an explicit identification of one or more member profiles stored in the profile database 218. This explicit identification may be determined by the searcher, for example, browsing or otherwise locating specific profiles that the searcher feels are ideal. For example, the searcher may know the identity of individuals on a team in which the open position is available, and may navigate to and select the profiles associated with those team individuals. In another example embodiment, the searcher may create one or more hypothetical “ideal candidate” profiles and use those as the input. In another example embodiment, the searcher may browse or search profiles in the profile database 218 using traditional browsing or searching techniques. In some example embodiments the explicit identification may be provided by the job poster.
The server profile search component 300 may contain an attribute extractor 304. The attribute extractor 304 extracts raw attributes, including, for example, skills, companies, titles, schools, industries, etc., from the profiles of the one or more ideal candidates. These raw attributes are then passed to a query builder 306. For each attribute type, the query builder 306 aggregates the raw attributes across the input candidates, expands them to similar attributes, and finally selects the top attributes that best represent the ideal candidates.
After the query is generated, in an example embodiment the generated query may be shown to the searcher via the client profile search component 302 and the searcher may have the opportunity to edit the generated query. This may include adding to or removing some attributes, such as skills and companies, in the query. As part of this operation, a query processor 308 may perform a search on the query and present raw results to the searcher via the client profile search component 302. These raw results may be useful to the searcher in determining how to edit the generated query.
In an example embodiment, a machine learning model is trained to make “smart suggestions” to the searcher as to how to modify the generated query. The model may be trained to output suggestions based on any number of different facets, such as title, company, industry, location, school, and skill.
Usage data can be gathered regarding actions taken by searchers when facing a suggestion—(1) add the suggestion, (2) delete the suggestion, or (3) ignore the suggestion. Intuitively, if a searcher adds a suggestion it is probably a desired one and thus can be considered a positive training sample. If the searcher deletes the suggestion it is probably not a desired one, and thus can be considered a negative training sample. For ignored suggestions, if the suggestion is positioned lower than an added suggestion (e.g. “Santa Clara University” is positioned lower than added “University of California, Santa Cruz”), then it is not certain whether the suggestion is really ignored by searchers or useless in the setting of the query. Thus, this data can be ignored. If, however, the ignored suggestion is positioned higher than an added suggestion, it can be treated as negative data.
After the query is modified, the query processor 308 may refresh the search results. A search results ranker 310 may act to rank the search results, taking into account both the query (including potentially the generated query and the modified generated query) as well as the input ideal candidates when ranking the search results.
Referring back to the query builder 306, given the raw attributes from the profiles of the ideal candidates, the query builder 306 generates a query containing skills, companies, titles, etc. that best represents the ideal candidates.
The query builder 306 may comprise a skills generator 312 designed to generate skills to be added to the generated query. The social networking service may allow members to add skills to their profiles. Typical examples of skills that, for example, an information technology (IT) recruiter might search could be “search,” “information retrieval,” “machine learning,” etc. Members may also endorse skills of other members in their network by, for example asserting that the member does indeed have the specified skills. Thus, skills may be an important part of members' profiles that showcase their professional expertise. A technical challenge encountered, however, is that ideal candidates may not explicitly list all of the skills they have on their profiles. Additionally, some of their skills may not be relevant to their core expertise. For example, an IT professional may list “nonprofit fundraising” as a skill.
To overcome these challenges, expertise scores for the ideal candidate may be estimated based on explicit skills (skills the member has explicitly listed) as well as implicit skills (skills the member is likely to have, but has not explicitly linked).
Prior to calculating expertise scores 402 on actual member profiles, a training apparatus 412 may obtain training data for statistical model 404, which includes a positive class 414 and a negative class 416. Positive class 414 may include data associated with items of a particular category (e.g., trait, attribute, dimension, etc.), while negative class 416 may include data associated with items that do not belong in the category.
For example, statistical model 404 may be a logistic regression model that classifies each member profile as either an expert or a non-expert in a corresponding skill. Positive class 414 may thus include a subset of features 406-408 associated with members with known expertise in one or more skills. Such “expert” members may be identified based on publications, speeches, awards, and/or contributions of the users in their respective fields. On the other hand, negative class 416 may include a subset of features 406-408 associated with members who are not recognized as experts in their respective fields, such as random members who list a given skill in their profiles. Because far fewer users belong in positive class 414 than negative class 416, positive class 414 may be oversampled to produce a roughly class-balanced set of training data for statistical model 404.
Next, training apparatus 412 may use positive class 414 and negative class 416 to train statistical model 404. For example, training apparatus 412 may use maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) and/or another estimation technique to estimate the parameters of a logistic regression model for calculating expertise scores 402. After training of the logistic regression model is complete, the parameters may be set so that the logistic regression model outputs values close to 1 for training data in positive class 414 and values close to 0 for training data in negative class 416.
The trained statistical model 404 may be provided to scoring apparatus 400, which calculates expertise scores 402 for member profiles not included in the training data (such as ideal member profiles supplied by the searcher) by applying statistical model 404 to features (e.g., features 406-408) for each of the items. For example, a feature vector may be generated for each item from a subset of features 406-408 in data repository 410, and statistical model 404 may be applied to the feature vector to calculate an expertise score for the item with respect to a dimension of the member profile.
Features 406-408 used in the calculation of expertise scores 402 may include demographic features, social features, and behavioral features. Demographic features may include data related to a user's location, age, experience, education, and/or background; social features may include features related to the behavior of other users with respect to the user; and behavioral features may include features related to the user's actions or behavior with the online professional network and/or related websites or applications.
Referring back to
The top N skills are then selected to represent the ideal candidates. Expertise scores of an ideal candidate on outlier skills are zero or very low, thus these skills are unlikely to be selected. Moreover, by taking the sum over all candidates, the skills which many candidates have are boosted, thus representing the commonality of the skill set among all idea candidates.
Turning now to companies, given the ideal candidate profiles, beside their own companies, the query builder 306 can generate a set of companies which are likely to have candidates similar to the ideal candidates in the ideal candidate profiles. In order to accomplish this, the query builder 306 contains a company generator 314, which uses collaborative filtering to find company relationships. Specifically, a company browse map using co-viewing relationships (people who view company A and also view company B) may be utilized. Intuitively, companies co-viewed by highly overlapped sets of people are likely to be similar. Thus, activity and/or usage information for searchers/browsers within the social networking service may be retrieved and mined to construct the company browse map, and this browse map may then be used to find the company relationships by the company generator 314. Other information may be used either in conjunction with or in lieu of the company browse map. For example, the social networking service may keep track of candidates that apply to a given company. Therefore, it may deduce that if a user who applied to company B also applied to company A, then company A and company B are similar. This similarity relationship may be used like the browse map is used to generate companies related to companies identified in profiles of ideal candidates. Another signal that may be used is company movement, meaning that if a large number of people who left company A went to work for company B, this might imply that company A and company B are somewhat similar.
Similar strategies can be used for other facets of a query. For example, title, industry, locations, and schools can all be expanded from those facets in the idea candidate profiles by finding similar facets using, for example, browse maps.
Once the query builder 306 completes building the query based on the techniques described above, the query may be submitted to a search engine to return search results. The hope, of course, is that the search results represent candidates who are similar in some ways to the ideal candidates submitted by the searcher, thus alleviating the searcher of the burden of composing the query. Once the results are returned, a search results ranker 310 may rank the search results according to one or more ranking algorithms. A subset of the top ranked search results may then be displayed to the searcher using a results display component 316. In an example embodiment, the results display component 316 interacts with the client profile search component 302 to facilitate such a display. The number of top ranked search results displayed may vary based on, for example, current size of a display window, font size, user preferences, etc.
While any ranking algorithms may be used by the search results ranker 310 to rank the search results, in an example embodiment a machine learning algorithm is used to train a ranking model specifically to be used with searches generated by searchers providing ideal candidates in lieu of text-based keywords. Given the significant difference between a search by ideal candidates and a traditional query-based search, this algorithm helps provide rankings that accommodate this new type of search.
Separately, an ideal candidate (IC)-based feature producer 606 receives as input the specified ideal candidate(s) and the search results from the query generated by the ideal candidate(s). The ideal candidate (IC)-based feature producer 606 then produces a set of ideal candidate-based features 608 of the results. Ideal candidate-based features 608 include features that are based on a comparison of ideal candidates and the search results (each feature measures one ideal candidate/search result pair). Example candidate-based features include similar career path, skill similarity, headline matching, headline similarity, and browsemap similarity.
Similar career path is a measure of a trajectory similarity between the positions held by the ideal candidate and the search result. Thus, for example, if the ideal candidate started as an intern, was promoted to a staff engineer, and then was promoted to project manager, a search result having a similar progression of the trajectory of their career path would rank higher in this feature than, for example, a search result who started off at the top (e.g., as a project manager). To capture the trajectory information, each member profile may be modeled as a sequence of nodes, each of which records all information within a particular position of a member's career, such as company, title, industry, time duration, and keyword summary.
At the node (position) level, similarity can then be ascertained by using a generalized linear model, although in other embodiments other approaches could be substituted. Then, at the sequence (profile) level, a sequence alignment method may be employed to find an optimal or near-optimal alignment between pairs of nodes from the two career paths.
Various schemes may be used to model the node corresponding to a job position, including sequence of positions and sequence of compositions. In the sequence of positions scheme, each node represents one particular position of the member's professional experience. In the sequence of compositions scheme, for each node, in addition to using position information, transition information is also incorporated between the given position and the previous one. In other words, the position information, along with transition-related information, together comprise the node. Transition information, such as whether title changes in this transition, whether company changes, how the seniority changes, and the time in this transition, enhances the representation of this scheme by further disclosing information of the changing trend between a previous and a given position.
When evaluating the similarity between two career paths, each node is a representation of one particular work experience. In order to compute the overall similarity between two career sequences, the score may be decomposed into the sum of the similarity between several pairs of aligned nodes from the two sequences respectively. A sequence alignment algorithm may be used to measure the sequence level similarity by calculating the sum of the optimal alignment of node pairs. The two sequences may be aligned incrementally. The sequence alignment scheme can be formulated as a dynamic programming procedure.
Suppose there are two career sequences P1=[X1;X2; ;Xm] and P2=[Y1;Y2; ;Yn]. (Xi and Yj are position/composition nodes from two career sequences respectively.) Further, a step of aligning subsequences P1 [1:i−1] and subsequence P2[1:j−1] may be encountered. (In other words, shorter subsequences have been aligned previously.) The subsequences P1[1:i] and P2[1:j] can be aligned in three ways according to the following cases:
It should be noted that the position-level similarity function employed may be symmetric. Hence, Snode(X_i, Y_j) is the same as Snode(Y_j, X_i). More formally, given the above two career sequences P1 and P2, the similarity between two career sequences can be solved using the following scheme:
Therein, Sseq is the similarity function at the career sequence level, Snode is the similarity function at the position/composition node level, and λ is the gap penalty parameter.
A similarity model may be learned at the node level by using, for example, a logistic regression model. Features relevant to this model may include, for example, current title, current company, current company size, current industry, current functions, job seniority, current position summary, title similarity, company similarity, industry similarity, duration difference between positions, whether two transitions were within the same company, whether two transitions were in the same industry, whether seniority changed, whether the title changed, and duration of time between the two transitions.
Skill similarity is a measure of similarity of the skill set of the ideal candidate and the skill set of the search result. It should be noted that skill sets may include skills that are explicit (e.g., specified by the member in their member profile) or implicit (e.g., skills that are similar to skills specified by the member in their member profile, but not explicitly listed).
Headline matching is a measure of the similarity between the query and the headline of each result. Notably, this is based on a text-based comparison, and is not strictly ideal candidate-based. A headline is one or more visible fields (along with name) displayed as a search result snippet for a search result. While the concept of creating snippets for each search result is a topic that is beyond the scope of the present disclosure, such snippets often include a headline that helps explain why the result is relevant and likely to trigger actions from the searcher. The headline matching feature, therefore, measures the similarity between the query and this headline from the search result's snippet.
Headline similarity is a measure of the similarity between a headline of the ideal candidate and the headline of the search result. This similarity calculation may be performed with or without considering word semantics. In example embodiments where word semantics are not considered, a word2vec algorithm may be utilized. Word3vec is a group of related models used to produce word-embeddings. The word-embeddings are shallow, two-layer neural networks that are trained to reconstruct linguistic contexts of words. The neural network is shown a word and guesses which words occurred in adjacent position in an input text. After training, word2vect models can be used to map each word to a vector of typically several hundred elements, which represent that word's relation to other words.
Browsemap similarity is a measure of whether and how much other members/searchers/browsers visited both the ideal candidate's profile and the search result's profile in the same browsing session. The intuition is that if previous members/searchers/browsers viewed both profiles in the same session, then there is a higher likelihood that the profiles are similar, and thus that the underlying ideal candidate and search result are similar.
The ideal candidate-based features 608 may be fed along with the scores from the query-based ranking model 604 to a machine learning algorithm 610. The machine learning algorithm 610 is designed to train a combined ranking model 612 that is capable of determining a ranking score for a search result at runtime. This training may use labels supplied for training data (e.g., training ideal candidates and training search results along with labeled scores for each). The training may involve the machine learning algorithm 610 learning which features/scores are more or less relevant to the ranking scores, and appropriately weighting such features and scores for runtime computations. At runtime, a feature extractor 614 extracts both query-based and ideal candidate-based features from the query, search results, and ideal candidates and feeds these features to the combined ranking model 612, which produces the scores as per its model. A ranker 616 then uses these ranking scores to rank the search results for display to the searcher.
It should be noted that since searching by ideal candidates is a new concept, it is difficult to generate labeled data directly from a log of previous search systems, as would typically be done to generate labeled data. Instead, in an example embodiment, labeled data is generated from the log of a query-based search. One such log is a log of electronic communications performed after the search. For example, if a searcher sees 20 results to a query-based search for candidates, and sends email communications to 8 candidates from the 20 results, then it may be assumed that these 8 candidates are similar enough to be considered for the same job, and thus if a profile for one or more of those 8 candidates had been submitted for a search by ideal candidate, the other candidates could be considered likely top results. In an example embodiment, other actions taken with respect to previous search results may be logged and similarly used to determine ideal candidate matches. For example, while communication with a candidate may be considered as strongly indicative of a match for the underlying position (and thus a match with other candidates also emailed for the same position) and assigned a high relevance score, clicking on a candidate (without an email) may be considered to be a partial match and may be assigned a moderate relevance score, while skipped results might be considered a low relevance score. The relevance scores may be used as the labels for the sample data.
Thus, in an example embodiment, communications between searchers and members of the social network service are monitored and logged and these communications are used to derive a label score for each sample search result/ideal candidate pair (the sample search results may simply be the search results presented in response to previous queries). The label score may be generated using various combinations of the metrics described above. For example, if the same searcher communicated with both candidates A and B in response to the same search query, then candidate B is assigned a score of 5 (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being most relevant) for an ideal candidate A and candidate A is assigned a score of 5 for an ideal candidate B. Actions such as clicking on a candidate that indicate a moderate relevance may be assigned a score of 3 and no actions may be assigned a score of 1. Scores for various log entries can then be combined and averaged. The result is profile pairs that have been assigned a score of between 1 and 5 based on previous actions or inactions by previous searchers. These label scores may then be used as labels for hypothetical ideal candidate/search result pairs for those same member profiles.
In an example embodiment, a dynamic weight trainer is introduced into the architecture of
At the same time, as the search session continues, the confidence of the remaining attributes (e.g., query-based attributes) increase in usefulness.
At operation 804, one or more attributes are extracted from the one or more ideal candidate documents. At operation 806, a search query is generated based on the extracted one or more attributes. At operation 808, a search is performed on documents using the generated search query, returning one or more result documents. Like with the ideal candidate documents, the result documents may also be member profiles in a social networking service.
At operation 912, a browse map is referenced. At operation 914, one or more companies are added to the search query, the companies being ones who have been co-viewed during the same browsing session as a company identified in one or more of the ideal candidate documents, by using the browse map.
At operation 1004, a search is performed using a search query, resulting one or more result documents. Like with the ideal candidate documents, the result documents may be member profiles in an example embodiment. In one example embodiment, operation 1004 can be performed using some of the operations described above with respect to
At operation 1006, one or more query-based features are produced from the one or more result documents using the search query. As described above, this may include features such as TF-IDF.
At operation 1008, one or more ideal candidate-based features may be produced from the one or more result documents using the one or more ideal candidate documents. As described above, the ideal candidate-based features may include similar career path, skill similarity, headline matching, headline similarity, and/or browsemap similarity.
At operation 1010, the one or more query-based features and the one or more ideal candidate-based features are input to a combined ranking model, outputting ranking scores for each of the one or more result member profiles. The combined ranking model may be trained using similar query-based and ideal candidate-based features from sample result documents as well as sample search queries and labels.
At operation 1012, the one or more result documents are ranked based on the ranking score. At operation 1014, display of the one or more top ranked result documents on a computer display is caused.
At operation 1108, the generated labels are fed into a machine learning algorithm to train a combined ranking model used to output ranking scores for search result member profiles.
At operation 1206, one or more query-based features are produced from the one or more result documents using the search query. At operation 1208, one or more ideal candidate-based features are produced from the one or more result documents using the one or more ideal candidate documents. At operation 1210, the one or more query-based features and the one or more ideal candidate-based features are input to a combined ranking model. The combined ranking model is trained by a machine learning algorithm to output a ranking score for each of the one or more result documents. The combined ranking model includes weights assigned to each of the one or more query-based features and each of the one or more ideal candidate-based features.
At operation 1212, the one or more result documents are ranked based on the ranking scores. At operation 1214, display of one or more top ranked documents on a computer display is caused. At operation 1216, one or more refinements to the search are received. At operation 1218, the weights assigned to each of the one or more query-based features are dynamically trained to increase as more refinements are received, and the weights assigned to each of the one or more ideal candidate-based features are dynamically trained to decrease as more refinements are received. This dynamic training may utilize a decay function based on, for example, time or number of refinements.
Certain embodiments are described herein as including logic or a number of components, modules, or mechanisms. Modules may constitute either software modules (e.g., code embodied on a machine-readable medium) or hardware modules. A “hardware module” is a tangible unit capable of performing certain operations and may be configured or arranged in a certain physical manner. In various example embodiments, one or more computer systems (e.g., a standalone computer system, a client computer system, or a server computer system) or one or more hardware modules of a computer system (e.g., a processor or a group of processors) may be configured by software (e.g., an application or application portion) as a hardware module that operates to perform certain operations as described herein.
In some embodiments, a hardware module may be implemented mechanically, electronically, or any suitable combination thereof. For example, a hardware module may include dedicated circuitry or logic that is permanently configured to perform certain operations. For example, a hardware module may be a special-purpose processor, such as a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). A hardware module may also include programmable logic or circuitry that is temporarily configured by software to perform certain operations. For example, a hardware module may include software executed by a general-purpose processor or other programmable processor. Once configured by such software, hardware modules become specific machines (or specific components of a machine) uniquely tailored to perform the configured functions and are no longer general-purpose processors. It will be appreciated that the decision to implement a hardware module mechanically, in dedicated and permanently configured circuitry, or in temporarily configured circuitry (e.g., configured by software) may be driven by cost and time considerations.
Accordingly, the phrase “hardware module” should be understood to encompass a tangible entity, be that an entity that is physically constructed, permanently configured (e.g., hardwired), or temporarily configured (e.g., programmed) to operate in a certain manner or to perform certain operations described herein. As used herein, “hardware-implemented module” refers to a hardware module. Considering embodiments in which hardware modules are temporarily configured (e.g., programmed), each of the hardware modules need not be configured or instantiated at any one instance in time. For example, where a hardware module comprises a general-purpose processor configured by software to become a special-purpose processor, the general-purpose processor may be configured as respectively different special-purpose processors (e.g., comprising different hardware modules) at different times. Software accordingly configures a particular processor or processors, for example, to constitute a particular hardware module at one instance of time and to constitute a different hardware module at a different instance of time.
Hardware modules can provide information to, and receive information from, other hardware modules. Accordingly, the described hardware modules may be regarded as being communicatively coupled. Where multiple hardware modules exist contemporaneously, communications may be achieved through signal transmission (e.g., over appropriate circuits and buses) between or among two or more of the hardware modules. In embodiments in which multiple hardware modules are configured or instantiated at different times, communications between such hardware modules may be achieved, for example, through the storage and retrieval of information in memory structures to which the multiple hardware modules have access. For example, one hardware module may perform an operation and store the output of that operation in a memory device to which it is communicatively coupled. A further hardware module may then, at a later time, access the memory device to retrieve and process the stored output. Hardware modules may also initiate communications with input or output devices, and can operate on a resource (e.g., a collection of information).
The various operations of example methods described herein may be performed, at least partially, by one or more processors that are temporarily configured (e.g., by software) or permanently configured to perform the relevant operations. Whether temporarily or permanently configured, such processors may constitute processor-implemented modules that operate to perform one or more operations or functions described herein. As used herein, “processor-implemented module” refers to a hardware module implemented using one or more processors.
Similarly, the methods described herein may be at least partially processor-implemented, with a particular processor or processors being an example of hardware. For example, at least some of the operations of a method may be performed by one or more processors or processor-implemented modules. Moreover, the one or more processors may also operate to support performance of the relevant operations in a “cloud computing” environment or as a “software as a service” (SaaS). For example, at least some of the operations may be performed by a group of computers (as examples of machines including processors), with these operations being accessible via a network (e.g., the Internet) and via one or more appropriate interfaces (e.g., an API).
The performance of certain of the operations may be distributed among the processors, not only residing within a single machine, but deployed across a number of machines. In some example embodiments, the processors or processor-implemented modules may be located in a single geographic location (e.g., within a home environment, an office environment, or a server farm). In other example embodiments, the processors or processor-implemented modules may be distributed across a number of geographic locations.
The modules, methods, applications, and so forth described in conjunction with
Software architectures are used in conjunction with hardware architectures to create devices and machines tailored to particular purposes. For example, a particular hardware architecture coupled with a particular software architecture will create a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, tablet device, or so forth. A slightly different hardware and software architecture may yield a smart device for use in the “internet of things,” while yet another combination produces a server computer for use within a cloud computing architecture. Not all combinations of such software and hardware architectures are presented here, as those of skill in the art can readily understand how to implement the inventive subject matter in different contexts from the disclosure contained herein.
In the example architecture of
The operating system 1514 may manage hardware resources and provide common services. The operating system 1514 may include, for example, a kernel 1528, services 1530, and drivers 1532. The kernel 1528 may act as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the other software layers. For example, the kernel 1528 may be responsible for memory management, processor management (e.g., scheduling), component management, networking, security settings, and so on. The services 1530 may provide other common services for the other software layers. The drivers 1532 may be responsible for controlling or interfacing with the underlying hardware. For instance, the drivers 1532 may include display drivers, camera drivers, Bluetooth® drivers, flash memory drivers, serial communication drivers (e.g., Universal Serial Bus (USB) drivers), Wi-Fi® drivers, audio drivers, power management drivers, and so forth depending on the hardware configuration.
The libraries 1516 may provide a common infrastructure that may be utilized by the applications 1520 and/or other components and/or layers. The libraries 1516 typically provide functionality that allows other software modules to perform tasks in an easier fashion than by interfacing directly with the underlying operating system 1514 functionality (e.g., kernel 1528, services 1530, and/or drivers 1532). The libraries 1516 may include system libraries 1534 (e.g., C standard library) that may provide functions such as memory allocation functions, string manipulation functions, mathematic functions, and the like. In addition, the libraries 1516 may include API libraries 1536 such as media libraries (e.g., libraries to support presentation and manipulation of various media formats such as MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG), graphics libraries (e.g., an OpenGL framework that may be used to render 2D and 3D graphic content on a display), database libraries (e.g., SQLite that may provide various relational database functions), web libraries (e.g., WebKit that may provide web browsing functionality), and the like. The libraries 1516 may also include a wide variety of other libraries 1538 to provide many other APIs to the applications 1520 and other software components/modules.
The frameworks 1518 (also sometimes referred to as middleware) may provide a higher-level common infrastructure that may be utilized by the applications 1520 and/or other software components/modules. For example, the frameworks 1518 may provide various graphic user interface (GUI) functions, high-level resource management, high-level location services, and so forth. The frameworks 1518 may provide a broad spectrum of other APIs that may be utilized by the applications 1520 and/or other software components/modules, some of which may be specific to a particular operating system or platform.
The applications 1520 include built-in applications 1540 and/or third party applications 1542. Examples of representative built-in applications 1540 may include, but are not limited to, a contacts application, a browser application, a book reader application, a location application, a media application, a messaging application, and/or a game application. The third party applications 1542 may include any of the built-in applications 1540 as well as a broad assortment of other applications. In a specific example, the third party application 1542 (e.g., an application developed using the Android™ or iOS™ software development kit (SDK) by an entity other than the vendor of the particular platform) may be mobile software running on a mobile operating system such as iOS™, Android™, Windows® Phone, or other mobile operating systems. In this example, the third party application 1542 may invoke the API calls 1524 provided by the mobile operating system such as the operating system 1514 to facilitate functionality described herein.
The applications 1520 may utilize built-in operating system 1514 functions (e.g., kernel 1528, services 1530, and/or drivers 1532), libraries 1516 (e.g., system libraries 1534, API libraries 1536, and other libraries 1538), and frameworks/middleware 1518 to create user interfaces to interact with users of the system. Alternatively, or additionally, in some systems, interactions with a user may occur through a presentation layer, such as the presentation layer 1544. In these systems, the application/module “logic” can be separated from the aspects of the application/module that interact with a user.
Some software architectures utilize virtual machines. In the example of
The machine 1600 may include processors 1610, memory/storage 1630, and I/O components 1650, which may be configured to communicate with each other such as via a bus 1602. In an example embodiment, the processors 1610 (e.g., a Central Processing Unit (CPU), a Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) processor, a Complex Instruction Set Computing (CISC) processor, a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), an ASIC, a Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC), another processor, or any suitable combination thereof) may include, for example, a processor 1612 and a processor 1614 that may execute the instructions 1616. The term “processor” is intended to include multi-core processors that may comprise two or more independent processors (sometimes referred to as “cores”) that may execute instructions contemporaneously. Although
The memory/storage 1630 may include a memory 1632, such as a main memory, or other memory storage, and a storage unit 1636, both accessible to the processors 1610 such as via the bus 1602. The storage unit 1636 and memory 1632 store the instructions 1616 embodying any one or more of the methodologies or functions described herein. The instructions 1616 may also reside, completely or partially, within the memory 1632, within the storage unit 1636, within at least one of the processors 1610 (e.g., within the processor's cache memory), or any suitable combination thereof, during execution thereof by the machine 1600. Accordingly, the memory 1632, the storage unit 1636, and the memory of the processors 1610 are examples of machine-readable media.
As used herein, “machine-readable medium” means a device able to store instructions and data temporarily or permanently and may include, but is not limited to, random-access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), buffer memory, flash memory, optical media, magnetic media, cache memory, other types of storage (e.g., Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM)), and/or any suitable combination thereof. The term “machine-readable medium” should be taken to include a single medium or multiple media (e.g., a centralized or distributed database, or associated caches and servers) able to store the instructions 1616. The term “machine-readable medium” shall also be taken to include any medium, or combination of multiple media, that is capable of storing instructions (e.g., instructions 1616) for execution by a machine (e.g., machine 1600), such that the instructions, when executed by one or more processors of the machine (e.g., processors 1610), cause the machine to perform any one or more of the methodologies described herein. Accordingly, a “machine-readable medium” refers to a single storage apparatus or device, as well as “cloud-based” storage systems or storage networks that include multiple storage apparatus or devices. The term “machine-readable medium” excludes signals per se.
The I/O components 1650 may include a wide variety of components to receive input, provide output, produce output, transmit information, exchange information, capture measurements, and so on. The specific I/O components 1650 that are included in a particular machine will depend on the type of machine. For example, portable machines such as mobile phones will likely include a touch input device or other such input mechanisms, while a headless server machine will likely not include such a touch input device. It will be appreciated that the I/O components 1650 may include many other components that are not shown in
In further example embodiments, the I/O components 1650 may include biometric components 1656, motion components 1658, environmental components 1660, or position components 1662, among a wide array of other components. For example, the biometric components 1656 may include components to detect expressions (e.g., hand expressions, facial expressions, vocal expressions, body gestures, or eye tracking), measure biosignals (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, perspiration, or brain waves), identify a person (e.g., voice identification, retinal identification, facial identification, fingerprint identification, or electroencephalogram based identification), and the like. The motion components 1658 may include acceleration sensor components (e.g., accelerometer), gravitation sensor components, rotation sensor components (e.g., gyroscope), and so forth. The environmental components 1660 may include, for example, illumination sensor components (e.g., photometer), temperature sensor components (e.g., one or more thermometers that detect ambient temperature), humidity sensor components, pressure sensor components (e.g., barometer), acoustic sensor components (e.g., one or more microphones that detect background noise), proximity sensor components (e.g., infrared sensors that detect nearby objects), gas sensors (e.g., gas detection sensors to detect concentrations of hazardous gases for safety or to measure pollutants in the atmosphere), or other components that may provide indications, measurements, or signals corresponding to a surrounding physical environment. The position components 1662 may include location sensor components (e.g., a Global Position System (GPS) receiver component), altitude sensor components (e.g., altimeters or barometers that detect air pressure from which altitude may be derived), orientation sensor components (e.g., magnetometers), and the like.
Communication may be implemented using a wide variety of technologies. The I/O components 1650 may include communication components 1664 operable to couple the machine 1600 to a network 1680 or devices 1670 via a coupling 1682 and a coupling 1672, respectively. For example, the communication components 1664 may include a network interface component or other suitable device to interface with the network 1680. In further examples, the communication components 1664 may include wired communication components, wireless communication components, cellular communication components, Near Field Communication (NFC) components. Bluetooth® components (e.g., Bluetooth® Low Energy), Wi-Fi® components, and other communication components to provide communication via other modalities. The devices 1670 may be another machine or any of a wide variety of peripheral devices (e.g., a peripheral device coupled via a USB).
Moreover, the communication components 1664 may detect identifiers or include components operable to detect identifiers. For example, the communication components 1664 may include Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag reader components, NFC smart tag detection components, optical reader components (e.g., an optical sensor to detect one-dimensional bar codes such as Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code, multi-dimensional bar codes such as Quick Response (QR) code, Aztec code, Data Matrix, Dataglyph, MaxiCode, PDF417, Ultra Code, UCC RSS-2D bar code, and other optical codes), or acoustic detection components (e.g., microphones to identify tagged audio signals). In addition, a variety of information may be derived via the communication components 1664, such as location via Internet Protocol (IP) geolocation, location via Wi-Fi® signal triangulation, location via detecting an NFC beacon signal that may indicate a particular location, and so forth.
In various example embodiments, one or more portions of the network 1680 may be an ad hoc network, an intranet, an extranet, a virtual private network (VPN), a local area network (LAN), a wireless LAN (WLAN), a WAN, a wireless WAN (WWAN), a metropolitan area network (MAN), the Internet, a portion of the Internet, a portion of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), a plain old telephone service (POTS) network, a cellular telephone network, a wireless network, a Wi-Fi® network, another type of network, or a combination of two or more such networks. For example, the network 1680 or a portion of the network 1680 may include a wireless or cellular network and the coupling 1682 may be a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) connection, a Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) connection, or another type of cellular or wireless coupling. In this example, the coupling 1682 may implement any of a variety of types of data transfer technology, such as Single Carrier Radio Transmission Technology (1×RTT), Evolution-Data Optimized (EVDO) technology, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology, Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) technology, third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) including 3G, fourth generation wireless (4G) networks, Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard, others defined by various standard-setting organizations, other long range protocols, or other data transfer technology.
The instructions 1616 may be transmitted or received over the network 1680 using a transmission medium via a network interface device (e.g., a network interface component included in the communication components 1664) and utilizing any one of a number of well-known transfer protocols (e.g., HTTP). Similarly, the instructions 1616 may be transmitted or received using a transmission medium via the coupling 1672 (e.g., a peer-to-peer coupling) to the devices 1670. The term “transmission medium” shall be taken to include any intangible medium that is capable of storing, encoding, or carrying the instructions 1616 for execution by the machine 1600, and includes digital or analog communications signals or other intangible media to facilitate communication of such software.
Throughout this specification, plural instances may implement components, operations, or structures described as a single instance. Although individual operations of one or more methods are illustrated and described as separate operations, one or more of the individual operations may be performed concurrently, and nothing requires that the operations be performed in the order illustrated. Structures and functionality presented as separate components in example configurations may be implemented as a combined structure or component. Similarly, structures and functionality presented as a single component may be implemented as separate components. These and other variations, modifications, additions, and improvements fall within the scope of the subject matter herein.
Although an overview of the inventive subject matter has been described with reference to specific example embodiments, various modifications and changes may be made to these embodiments without departing from the broader scope of embodiments of the present disclosure. Such embodiments of the inventive subject matter may be referred to herein, individually or collectively, by the term “invention” merely for convenience and without intending to voluntarily limit the scope of this application to any single disclosure or inventive concept if more than one is, in fact, disclosed.
The embodiments illustrated herein are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the teachings disclosed. Other embodiments may be used and derived therefrom, such that structural and logical substitutions and changes may be made without departing from the scope of this disclosure. The Detailed Description, therefore, is not to be taken in a limiting sense, and the scope of various embodiments is defined only by the appended claims, along with the full range of equivalents to which such claims are entitled.
As used herein, the term “or” may be construed in either an inclusive or exclusive sense. Moreover, plural instances may be provided for resources, operations, or structures described herein as a single instance. Additionally, boundaries between various resources, operations, modules, engines, and data stores are somewhat arbitrary, and particular operations are illustrated in a context of specific illustrative configurations. Other allocations of functionality are envisioned and may fall within a scope of various embodiments of the present disclosure. In general, structures and functionality presented as separate resources in the example configurations may be implemented as a combined structure or resource. Similarly, structures and functionality presented as a single resource may be implemented as separate resources. These and other variations, modifications, additions, and improvements fall within a scope of embodiments of the present disclosure as represented by the appended claims. The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
