In an age when people are anxious about artificial intelligence (AI) taking away jobs, the Indiana Department of Workforce Development (DWD) is leveraging the technology to help people find employment.
The state agency launched Pivot, a tool that uses AI to more accurately provide employment recommendations to job seekers. The AI program combines analytics about current and future job market trends with individuals’ work and wage history and education to project potential career paths.
John Richardson, chief of staff for the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, said the program, which was launched just over a year ago in November 2023, is more complex than most well-known job platforms. The biggest difference, he noted, is the availability of confidential data that is not readily available to the public.
“One thing that the government has is access to data that is really valuable. One of the things we collect to administer the unemployment insurance is wage records from employers, and so we know who they work for, where they worked, and how much money they made,” said Richardson. “That information allows us to get a picture of how people’s wages change over time, when they move from one employer to another, from one job to another, from one industry to another. You can start to layer on top of that data any training and skills that they have. This is all data that sits in separate systems, but if we take all of that data, and apply artificial intelligence to it, we are able to see movements.”
Richardson said filing an unemployment claim is a sensitive time for those facing joblessness, and the ability to steer them in a direction with suggestions about occupations that are based on their own work history or based on the successful outcomes of people who shared similar work histories is a much more sustainable process than pointing them to job posting boards.
Tracking Progress
Pivot has been built into the department’s existing unemployment filing claim system using a streamlined process of pulling demographic and work history information to run through the AI algorithm. Within 24 hours of filing the claim, when job seekers sign into the account, they can access recommendations that will provide a ranked list of potential occupations. From there, job seekers who opt-in can be connected with training providers.
The tool is also a way to streamline the access and navigation of Indiana’s many online job resources, Richardson noted. Pivot acts as a portal to those resources, ensuring that job seekers are aware of the available programs and can access them quickly.
“We want to make it seamless and as easy as possible for them to make that final connection,” he said.
While Richardson said it is too early to gauge the performance of the outcomes, the agency is encouraged by the feedback they receive based on the response of job seekers using the tool.
“What we're seeing is that more than half of the people who get these recommendations are opening them and looking at it, and that's a really big deal for us,” he said. “This 50 percent open rate is really impactful. We’ve learned that if we can put this right in front of people in a smart way, they will use it, and that encourages us to make sure we are as good as we can be in making sure we put the right information in front of them at the right time.”
Evolving Process
Pivot is a tool that the department can learn from as time goes on, noted Richardson. He said factors like economic fluctuations, industry development, and other influences can affect employment outcomes.
“With an engine that is constantly progressing, we can update the algorithm to get real-time data that allows us to have a high degree of confidence for a realistic career path,” he said. “We can retrain the model all the time.”
Richardson said in the future, the department hopes to implement additional features, including the use of incorporating data for recommendations about new jobs and workforce needs when companies announce plans to open facilities in the area. Feeding future-looking employment data into the model can suggest additional potential career paths for job-seekers, he said. While Pivot is available now only to those who are filing unemployment claims, Richardson said it is the agency’s hope that in the future, everyone could use the tool.
“The main goal right now is to show people on a realistic level how they can take a step forward after job loss,” he said. “We can now give them some of the best data and information that is available to help them make better-informed decisions about their career.”
