Patent Application
20170193453
This application relates to the technical fields of software and/or hardware technology and, in one example embodiment, to system and method to facilitate a referral process in an on-line social network system.
An on-line social network may be viewed as a platform to connect people in virtual space. An on-line social network may be a web-based platform, such as, e.g., a social networking web site, and may be accessed by a use via a web browser or via a mobile application provided on a mobile phone, a tablet, etc. An on-line social network may be a business-focused social network that is designed specifically for the business community, where registered members establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally. Each registered member may be represented by a member profile. A member profile may be represented by one or more web pages, or a structured representation of the member's information in XML (Extensible Markup Language), JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) or similar format. A member's profile web page of a social networking web site may emphasize employment history and education of the associated member. An on-line social network system also maintains information about various companies, as well as job postings. An on-line social network system may provide a service for providing information about job postings to members.
Embodiments of the present invention are illustrated by way of example and not limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numbers indicate similar elements and in which:
A method and system to facilitate a referral process in an on-line social network system is described. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of an embodiment of the present invention. It will be evident, however, to one skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details.
As used herein, the term “or” may be construed in either an inclusive or exclusive sense. Similarly, the term “exemplary” is merely to mean an example of something or an exemplar and not necessarily a preferred or ideal means of accomplishing a goal. Additionally, although various exemplary embodiments discussed below may utilize Java-based servers and related environments, the embodiments are given merely for clarity in disclosure. Thus, any type of server environment, including various system architectures, may employ various embodiments of the application-centric resources system and method described herein and is considered as being within a scope of the present invention.
For the purposes of this description the phrase “an on-line social networking application” may be referred to as and used interchangeably with the phrase “an on-line social network” or merely “a social network.” It will also be noted that an on-line social network may be any type of an on-line social network, such as, e.g., a professional network, an interest-based network, or any on-line networking system that permits users to join as registered members. For the purposes of this description, registered members of an on-line social network may be referred to as simply members.
Each member of an on-line social network is represented by a member profile (also referred to as a profile of a member or simply a profile). The profile information of a social network member may include personal information such as, e.g., the name of the member, current and previous geographic location of the member, current and previous employment information of the member, information related to education of the member, information about professional accomplishments of the member, publications, patents, etc. The profile information of a social network member may also include information about the member's professional skills, such as, e.g., “product management,” “patent prosecution,” “image processing,” etc.). The profile of a member may also include information about the member's current and past employment, such as company identifications, professional titles held by the associated member at the respective companies, as well as the member's dates of employment at those companies.
A member profile is also associated with social links that indicate the associated member's connection to other members of the social network. Any two members of an on-line social network may indicate their mutual willingness to be “connected” in the context of the social network, in that they can view each other's profiles, profile recommendations and endorsements for each other and otherwise be in touch via the social network. Members who are connected in the context of a social network may be termed each other's “connections” and their respective profiles are associated with respective connection links indicative of these two profiles being connected. Two members may be referred as each other's first degree connections when their respective profiles include connection links that indicate that these two profiles are connected. When a member (let's call her member A) is not connected to another member (let's call him member B), but is connected to member C, who is connected to member B, member A and member B are considered each other's second degree connections in the on-line social network. A member's connections, both first degree connections and higher degree connections are refereed to, collectively, as the member's network.
As mentioned above, an on-line social network system also maintains information about various companies, as well as so-called job postings. A job posting, for the purposes of this description is an electronically stored entity that includes information that an employer may post with respect to a job opening. The information in a job posting may include, e.g., the industry, job position, required. and/or desirable skills, geographic location of the job, the name of a company, etc. Member profiles and job postings are represented in the on-line social network system by feature vectors. The features in the feature vectors may represent, e.g., a job industry, a professional field, a job title, a company name, professional seniority, geographic location, etc.
In one embodiment, the on-line social network system includes or is in communication with a so-called recommendation engine that may be part of or in communication with the on-line social network system. A recommendation engine may be configured to determine whether a member profile represents a potential good candidate for a job advertised by a particular job posting, and, if so, present that job posting to the member, e.g., via an email, on the news feed page of the member, as a pop-up message when the member accesses the on-line social network system using a browser application of a mobile app, in response to a job search request initiated by the member within the on-line social network system, etc. A recommendation engine may be provided in the form of a binary classifier that can be trained using a set of training data. The set of training data can be constructed using historical data, such as, e.g., data that indicates whether a certain job posting presented to a certain member resulted in that member applying for that job, whether the member viewed the job posting, shared it with other members, etc. A trained binary classifier may be used to generate, for a (member profile, job posting) pair, a value indicative of how well the job presented in the posting is suited for the member represented by the member profile. This value may be referred to as a relevance score and may be calculated as cosine similarity between the respective feature vectors of the member profile and the job posting from a (member profile, job posting) pair. A job posting may be recommended to a member if, e.g., the associated relevance score is greater than a predetermined threshold value.
When a job position opens up at a company, it may be beneficial to solicit referrals for the job from people who are currently employed at the company. A potential challenge, however, is that an employee is not necessarily aware of what jobs the company is trying to fill and whether any of their connections in the on-line social network would be potentially interested in or sufficiently qualified for any of the currently available jobs. A technological solution to these challenges is a computer-implemented referral system that utilizes data available in the on-line social network system. A referral system may be part of or in communication with the on-line social network system and may also include or be in communication with a recommendation engine. In some embodiments, a recommendation engine may include or be in communication with a referral system. For the purposes of this description, a system comprising modules that, collectively, provide functionality of a recommendation engine and a referral system, is referred to as a referral system.
In one embodiment, a referral system is configured to select a connected member profile from the employee's network, generate a selected set of job postings representing jobs available at the employee's company, and present to the employee references to these selected job postings together with an invitation to refer the person represented by the connected member profile for one of these selected jobs. It will be noted that, while an organization, at which employment may be offered, may be an entity other than a company, the term “company” is used for the purposes of this description to refer to any organization, at which employment may be offered.
The referral system accesses a member profile representing an employee of a certain company (employee member profile) and a connected member profile representing the employee's connection in the on-line social network. A connected member profile may be selected by the referral system randomly or based on certain predetermined criteria, such as the strength of connection between the employee member profile and her connection's profile, the likelihood that the person represented by the connected member profile is interested in or is qualified for any of the jobs available at the employee's company, etc. A connected member profile may also be selected by the referral system in response to a request from the employee. The referral system then examines the job postings that represent jobs Gob openings) at the employee's company and selects a presentation set of job postings based on (1) fitness of the candidate represented by the connected member profile for a job represented by the job posting and (2) familiarity of the employee with the job. A connected member profile, with respect to which the referral system generates a presentation set of job postings, is termed a target connected member profile.
In one embodiment, for each of the job posting from the set, the referral system generates a so-called presentation score with respect to the employee member profile and the target connected member profile. The presentation score generated for a job posting reflects likelihood that that the employee refers the candidate represented by the target connected member profile for the job represented by a job posting. The presentation score a job posting with respect to an employee member profile and a target connected member profile may be expressed as P(J|E, C), where J is a job posting, C is the target connected member profile, and E is the employee member profile. The presentation score P(J|E, C) is calculated as shown in Equation (1) below.
P(J|E, C)=P(J|C)P(J|E) Equation 1
As expressed in Equation (1), the presentation score is a combination of the value P(J|C) reflecting fitness of the candidate represented by the target connected member profile C for the job represented by the target job posting J and the value P(J|E) reflecting familiarity of the employee represented by the employee member profile E with the job represented by the job posting J. The value P(J|C) is a relevance score that can be calculated by a recommendation engine for the target connected member profile C in relation to the job represented by the job posting J. When a relevance score is being used to determine a score for the target connected member profile with respect to a job posting, the relevance score is termed a fitness score (to indicate how fit is the candidate for the job). The value P(J|E) is a relevance score that can also be calculated by a recommendation engine for the employee member profile E in relation to the job represented by the job posting J. When a relevance score is being used to determine a score for the employee member profile with respect to a job posting, the relevance score is termed a familiarity score (to indicate how familiar the employee is with the job).
The referral system uses respective presentation scores generated for the job postings to determine which of these postings to be selected for inclusion into a referral user interface for presentation to the employee. For example, a certain number or a certain percentage of the job postings that have the highest presentation scores, as compared to respective presentation scores generated for other job postings, are used in generating a referral user interface for presentation to the subject employee. An example referral user interface screen 400 for presenting, to an employee, a set of job postings representing respective jobs at the employee's company with an invitation to refer a particular connection of the employee for one of these jobs is illustrated in
As shown in
The client systems 110 and 12.0 may be capable of accessing the server system 140 via a communications network 130, utilizing, e.g., a browser application 112 executing on the client system 110, or a mobile application executing on the client system 120. The communications network 130 may be a public network (e.g., the Internet, a mobile communication network, or any other network capable of communicating digital data). As shown in
The referral system 144 may be configured to generate a set of job postings for presentation to a member of the on-line social network system who is an employee of a particular target organization (or company) with a suggestion, explicit or implicit, that the member may wish to refer, to a particular connection of the employee, one or more of the jobs represented by the presented job postings, as already described above. The referral system 144 accesses, from the database 150, a member profile representing an employee of a certain company (employee member profile) and a connected member profile representing the employee's connection in the on-line social network 142. The referral system 144 examines job postings stored in the database 150 that represent jobs (job openings) at the employee's company, and selects a presentation set of job postings based on (1) fitness of the candidate represented by the connected member profile for a job represented by the job posting and (2) familiarity of the employee with the job. In one embodiment, the referral system 144 generates, for each job posting, a presentation score that reflects a likelihood that that particular employee refers the candidate represented by the particular connected member profile for the job represented by the job posting. The referral system 144 uses respective presentation scores generated for the job postings to determine, which job postings are to be selected for inclusion into a referral UI for presentation to the employee, e.g., on a display device of the client system 110 or on a display device of the client system 120. The presentation scores may be calculated using Equation (1) shown above. An example referral system 144 is illustrated in
The subject set selector 220 is configured to access, from the database 150 of
The presentation score generator 230 is configured generate, for each job posting from the set of job postings, a respective presentation score based on (1) fitness of the candidate represented by the connected member profile for a job represented by the job posting and (2) familiarity of the employee with the job. In one embodiment, the presentation score generator 230 calculates the respective presentation scores using Equation (1) described above. As explained above, the presentation score for a job posting may be calculated by combining the fitness value and the familiarity value. The fitness value may be calculated for the connected member profile and the job posting as cosine similarity between respective feature vectors of the connected member profile and the target job posting. The familiarity value may be calculated for the employee member profile and the job posting as cosine similarity between respective feature vectors of the employee member profile and the job posting. The presentation score generator 240 may be configured to assign respective weights to the fitness value, the fitness value and the familiarity value, and to use these respective weights in combining these values for generating a presentation score. As mentioned above, the features in the feature vectors may represent, e.g., a job industry, a professional field, a job title, a company name, professional seniority, geographic location, etc.
The presentation set selector 240 is configured to select a presentation set of job postings based on the respective presentation scores generated for the set of connected member profiles. For example, a certain number or a certain percentage of connected member profiles with the highest presentation score may be selected for presentation to the employee using a UI screen such as, e.g., illustrated in
The referral user interface generator 250 is configured to generate a referral user interface, such as, e.g., illustrated in
The presentation module 260 is configured to cause displaying of the referral user interface on a display device, e.g., on a display device of the client system 110 of
As shown in
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. The modules referred to herein may, in some example embodiments, comprise processor-implemented modules.
Similarly, the methods described herein may be at least partially processor-implemented. For example, at least some of the operations of a method may be performed by one or more processors or processor-implemented modules. The performance of certain of the operations may be distributed among the one or more processors, not only residing within a single machine, but deployed across a number of machines. In some example embodiments, the processor or processors may be located in a single location (e.g., within a home environment, an office environment or as a server farm), while in other embodiments the processors may be distributed across a number of locations.
The example computer system 500 includes a processor 502 (e.g., a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU) or both), a main memory 504 and a static memory 506, which communicate with each other via a bus 505. The computer system 500 may further include a video display unit 510 (e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a cathode ray tube (CRT)). The computer system 500 also includes an alpha-numeric input device 512 (e.g., a keyboard), a user interface (UI) navigation device 514 (e.g., a cursor control device), a disk drive unit 516, a signal generation device 518 (e.g., a speaker) and a network interface device 520.
The disk drive unit 516 includes a machine-readable medium 522 on which is stored one or more sets of instructions and data structures (e.g., software 524) embodying or utilized by any one or more of the methodologies or functions described herein. The software 524 may also reside, completely or at least partially, within the main memory 504 and/or within the processor 502 during execution thereof by the computer system 500, with the main memory 504 and the processor 502 also constituting machine-readable media.
The software 524 may further be transmitted or received over a network 526 via the network interface device 520 utilizing any one of a number of well-known transfer protocols (e.g., Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)).
While the machine-readable medium 522 is shown in an example embodiment to be a single medium, the term “machine-readable medium” should be taken to include a single medium or multiple media (e.g., a centralized or distributed database, and/or associated caches and servers) that store the one or more sets of instructions. The term “machine-readable medium” shall also be taken to include any medium that is capable of storing and encoding a set of instructions for execution by the machine and that cause the machine to perform any one or more of the methodologies of embodiments of the present invention, or that is capable of storing and encoding data structures utilized by or associated with such a set of instructions. The term “machine-readable medium” shall accordingly be taken to include, but not be limited to, solid-state memories, optical and magnetic media. Such media may also include, without limitation, hard disks, floppy disks, flash memory cards, digital video disks, random access memory (RAMs), read only memory (ROMs), and the like.
The embodiments described herein may be implemented in an operating environment comprising software installed on a computer, in hardware, or in a combination of software and hardware. 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 invention or inventive concept if more than one is, in fact, disclosed.
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 (1) on a non-transitory machine-readable medium or (2) in a transmission signal) or hardware-implemented modules. A hardware-implemented module is tangible unit capable of performing certain operations and may be configured or arranged in a certain manner. In example embodiments, one or more computer systems (e.g., a standalone, client or server computer system) or one or more processors may be configured by software (e.g., an application or application portion) as a hardware-implemented module that operates to perform certain operations as described herein.
In various embodiments, a hardware-implemented module may be implemented mechanically or electronically. For example, a hardware-implemented module may comprise dedicated circuitry or logic that is permanently configured (e.g., as a special-purpose processor, such as a field programmable gate array (FPGA) or an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)) to perform certain operations. A hardware-implemented module may also comprise programmable logic or circuitry (e.g., as encompassed within a general-purpose processor or other programmable processor) that is temporarily configured by software to perform certain operations. It will be appreciated that the decision to implement a hardware-implemented 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 term “hardware-implemented module” should be understood to encompass a tangible entity, be that an entity that is physically constructed, permanently configured (e.g., hardwired) or temporarily or transitorily configured (e.g., programmed) to operate in a certain manner and/or to perform certain operations described herein. Considering embodiments in which hardware-implemented modules are temporarily configured (e.g., programmed), each of the hardware-implemented modules need not be configured or instantiated at any one instance in time. For example, where the hardware-implemented modules comprise a general-purpose processor configured using software, the general-purpose processor may be configured as respective different hardware-implemented modules at different times. Software may accordingly configure a processor, for example, to constitute a particular hardware-implemented module at one instance of time and to constitute a different hardware-implemented module at a different instance of time.
Hardware-implemented modules can provide information to, and receive information from, other hardware-implemented modules. Accordingly, the described hardware-implemented modules may be regarded as being communicatively coupled. Where multiple of such hardware-implemented modules exist contemporaneously, communications may be achieved through signal transmission (e.g., over appropriate circuits and buses) that connect the hardware-implemented modules. In embodiments in which multiple hardware-implemented modules are configured or instantiated at different times, communications between such hardware-implemented modules may be achieved, for example, through the storage and retrieval of information in memory structures to which the multiple hardware-implemented modules have access. For example, one hardware-implemented 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-implemented module may then, at a later time, access the memory device to retrieve and process the stored output. Hardware-implemented 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. The modules referred to herein may, in some example embodiments, comprise processor-implemented modules.
Similarly, the methods described herein may be at least partially processor-implemented. For example, at least some of the operations of a method may be performed by one or processors or processor-implemented modules. The performance of certain of the operations may be distributed among the one or more processors, not only residing within a single machine, but deployed across a number of machines. In some example embodiments, the processor or processors may be located in a single location (e.g., within a home environment, an office environment or as a server farm), while in other embodiments the processors may be distributed across a number of locations.
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), these operations being accessible via a network (e.g., the Internet) and via one or more appropriate interfaces (e.g., Application Program Interfaces (APIs).)
Thus, a method and system to facilitate a referral process in an on-line social network system has been described. Although embodiments have been described with reference to specific example embodiments, it will be evident that various modifications and changes may be made to these embodiments without departing from the broader scope of the inventive subject matter. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
