Industry Requirements of Operations Research Skills Based on Statistical Content Analysis of Job Ads

Abstract

We analyzed the text of more than 1,000 advertisements of US-based O.R. jobs to empirically determine the skills industry employers seek in graduates with O.R. backgrounds at the bachelors, masters, PhD, or MBA degree level. We found that employers consistently require modeling, statistics, programming and general analytical skills in an operations management context as their top requirements regardless of sector, function within company, and even degree type as their top requirements. Moreover, these requirements are significantly different for another database of job ads that we analyzed. This indicates that employers perceive O.R. to be unique in comprising a mix of modeling, statistics, programming and general analytical skills but in an operations context. Our analysis also shows that similar to other operations (but non-O.R.) jobs, employers also require communication, leadership, project management, spreadsheet and database and team skills.

Keywords: content analysis, job skills, operations research, industry employers needs, empirical analysis

JEL Classification: C10, C49, C60, M53