Matthew Harris presented on Career Path Analysis with Neo4j. He founded a company that builds data analytics tools to analyze career outcomes and paths. The company's new tool, Patheer, uses Neo4j to store user, job, and education data and analyze relationships to provide career path recommendations and help users discover their ideal career. Neo4j was well-suited for this application because the data has both relational and unstructured aspects with direct and indirect connections that need to be explored through paths and recommendations.

1. Career Path Analysis with Neo4j
Presentation by:
30 Beach St #2
Quincy, MA 02170
www.collegeminer.com
www.patheer.com
Matthew S. Harris
Co-Founder, Technology & Infrastructure
matthew.harris@collegeminer.com
matthew.harris@patheer.com
Twitter @harrisminer

2. About Me
Matthew Harris
Co-Founder, Technology & Infrastructure
• 10+ years database architecture and application development
• Masters Degree in Business Intelligence and Data Mining
• Experience in other startups
• Research at Boston University
Past Experience

3. Introduction
Build data analytics tools focused on analyzing career outcomes and paths.
• Founded in 2011
• Located in Boston, MA
• Original Premise - Do students get jobs related to their major?
• What can I do with my major?

4. New Tool
Live your passion, discover your path!
• Private Beta Launched in May 2013
• Public Beta Launch on November 8, 2013 in Boston, MA
• www.patheer.com
Goals & Focus
Holistic career analysis, planning, and recommendation tool.
1. Don’t get weeded out
2. Avoid painful job searches
3. Discover and plan the path to your dream career

5. Patheer Hierarchy
User Data
Market Data
20gb/day -city
Resume
Job Postings
Extraction & Parsing
User Activity
Resumes
Data Processing
Data Stores
Data Relay
Precog
Analysis Engine
Application
MongoDB
Neo4j
MS SQL

6. User Capabilities
Resume Analysis
• Understand how parsers work
• Analyze how complete your resume is
according to parser
Job Matches
• Get jobs that match your background
• Analyze why you don’t qualify for a particular job
Research
• Jobs
• Schools
• Companies
• Cities
Career Path Analysis
• View and analyze your career path
• Analyze what others did to reach your career goal
• Get recommendations on how to reach your career goal

7. Problem & Solution
How to store and analyze this data?
• Not transactional
• Somewhat relational
• Unstructured/Semi-structured data
• Direct and indirect connections
• Real-time and batch
• Flexible/Partial schema
• 3 instances
• Relationships
• Paths
• Weighted Paths
• Neo4jClient (C# Library)
• Shout out to Tatham Oddie!
• Customized data processing
• Mostly depth-first analysis

8. Relationships

9. Career Path Analysis
1. View and analyze your career path
2. Analyze what others did to reach your career goal
3. Get recommendations on how to reach your career goal

10. User Career Path
What does my career path look like?
START person1=node(*)
MATCH m = person1-[p:PATH]->x
WHERE p.UserID! = {userid}
RETURN p order by p.Date asc;
User 1
Bachelors
Degree
Database
Analyst
Database
Admin

11. User Career Path
Add your career goal
?
User 1
Database
Analyst
Bachelors
Degree
Database
Architect
Database
Admin

12. Career Path Analysis
1. View and analyze your career path
2. Analyze what others did to reach your career goal
3. Get recommendations on how to reach your career goal

13. Career Pathing with Neo4j
User X
Bachelors
Degree
Database
Analyst
Database
Admin
Masters
Degree
Database
Architect
User Y
Data
Analyst
Bachelors
Degree
Database
Develop
Database
Admin
Database
Architect
User Z
Bachelors
Degree
Masters
Degree
Database
Admin
Database
Develop
Database
Architect

14. Career Pathing with Neo4j
Database
Analyst
User X
Database
Admin
User Y
User Z
Data
Analyst
Database
Develop
Bachelors
Degree
Masters
Degree
Database
Architect

15. Career Pathing with Neo4j
Database
Develop
Database
Analyst
Data
Analyst
1
1
1
1
Users
1
1
1
Database
Admin
2
Bachelors
Degree
1
1
1
1
Masters
Degree
1
Database
Architect

16. Analysis
What are the top 3 traversals for each job group?
• Not an easy task!
• Variable path lengths with unique traversals
• Can’t simply do allPaths or x – [p:PATH*]-> y
• Unique identifiers
• Where x.pathnumber + 1 = y.pathnumber
• A* and Dijkstra
• Only least cost/cheapest path
• Need most cost (most traversed)
• Customized Solution/Query
•
•
•
•
Batch process nightly for all end nodes
Calculate sum of path weights (still testing optimal solution)
Store top 3 results in Precog (backend)
Application queries Precog

17. Career Path Analysis
1. View and analyze your career path
2. Analyze what others did to reach your career goal
3. Get recommendations on how to reach your career goal

18. User Career Path Recommendations
Recommendations based off of:
• Current Position –[p:path*1..?]->Career Goal
• User background (from resume)
• Real-time market data
1
• User relationships and connections
User 1
Database
Analyst
Bachelors
Degree
Database
Admin
2
3
Database
Architect

19. Timeline
Beta Launch!
• November 8, 2013
• Greater Boston Area
• All Job Categories and Industries
City Expansion
• Spring 2014
• All Job Categories and Industries
New Features (Coming Soon!)
• Research College Majors
• Career Path Explorer

20. Career Path Explorer Teaser
1. How do I become a…?
• Start at End Node and work backwards
?
Database
Architect
Bachelors
Degree
?
?
Database
Architect
2. What can I do with my degree?
• Start at Start Node and work forward
3. Advanced Search
• Select Start and End Nodes
Bachelors
Degree

21. THANK YOU!!
Presentation by:
30 Beach St #2
Quincy, MA 02170
www.collegeminer.com
www.patheer.com
Matthew S. Harris
Co-Founder, Technology & Infrastructure
matthew.harris@collegeminer.com
matthew.harris@patheer.com
Twitter @harrisminer