Congratulations to Industrial-Organizational doctoral student Chu Chu, advised by Assistant Professor of Psychology and Labor and Employment Relations Bo Zhang, who has received a grant from the Society for Organizational and Industrial Psychology to support her dissertation!

In this proposed project, we aim to develop and validate a career guidance chatbot—an interactive tool that collects and analyzes a diverse set of individuals’ work preferences through efficient human-like conversations. For job seekers, the career guidance chatbot will match their preferences on a broad range of public domain occupational information, ultimately producing fitting career suggestions. Alternatively, for employers looking to fill a specialized position, the chatbot can take in the job’s unique characteristics to identify suitable candidates with matching preference profiles—who are likely to perform well on the job in the future. In comparison to traditional survey instruments and interview methods, the chatbot is more time-efficient, cost-effective, and adaptive to users of all education levels. Hence, we see this project of high potential in benefiting job seeker’s search process and organizations’ hiring process.