A Predictive Analysis of the Mean Month Interval

between Graduation and First Job Employment of

UST IICS and Engineering Students
Baltazar, Gerard Alvin G.
Institute of Information and Computing Sciences,
Department of Information Systems University of
Santo Tomas España, Manila
+63 9154412525
2014067573@ust-ics.mygbiz.com
Duro, Kenny Francis O.
Institute of Information and Computing Sciences,
Department of Information Systems University of
Santo Tomas España, Manila
+63 9063410973
2015081695@ust-ics.mygbiz.com

Dela Cruz, Vince Cedrick V. Ngungie, Dennis M.

Institute of Information and Computing Sciences, Institute of Information and Computing Sciences,
Department of Information Systems University of Department of Information Systems University of
Santo Tomas España, Manila Santo Tomas España, Manila
+63 9567550386 +63 9273627822
2015081694@ust-ics.mygbiz.com 2013055153@ust-ics.mygbiz.com

Khrisnamonte M. Balmeo
Institute of Information and Computing Sciences,
Department of Information Systems
University of Santo Tomas España, Manila
+63 9553763844
kmbalmeo@ust-ics.mygbiz.com

ABSTRACT forecasts do not display noticeable differences from the last

One of the areas being checked by the international
accreditation bodies is the employability of the graduates of
the academic institutions. Specifically, graduates must be
employed within six months after completion of their degree
programs and their jobs must be in line with their degrees.
Hence, the University of Santo Tomas Office of Alumni
Relations (OAR) is keeping track of the alumni record
particularly the employment history. The project aims to
create an analytical dashboard that provides predictive and
descriptive analysis using the accumulating Alumni
Employment History data gathered by OAR. Alumni data of
Institute of Information and Computing Sciences (IICS) and
Faculty of Engineering of the Alumni Information System
(AIS) were extracted from the database of the university and
processed through an automated data transformation
process, loaded to the client’s new database, and used in
data visualization tool. With the use of visualizations, work
sector and job alignment of the alumni were identified. Point
Biserial Correlation technique was performed to identify
among attributes namely gender, location, nationality and
achievements particularly Latin honors and dean's list highly
affect the interval time of an IICS and Engineering
graduates. The forecasting method is executed in Rstudio
and loaded to Power BI for visualization. Single Exponential
Smoothing and Double Exponential Smoothing were used
as forecasting models. The outcome reveals the month
interval forecast value for Engineering that got lower score,
and the forecast for the month interval for IICS remained the
same. Using an optimized smoothing constant the current
actual values. Single exponential smoothing was found to be
the suitable method for forecasting. This work and its future
application will be beneficial to the OAR, the students, and
the future researchers.
CCS Concepts
Information systems---Information systems applications---
Decision support systems---Data analytics
Mathematics of computing---Probability and statistics ---
Statistical paradigms---Time series analysis
Information systems--- Information systems applications---
Data mining --- Data cleaning
Keywords
Predictive; Alumni; Analytics;
1. INTRODUCTION
Office of Alumni Relations has become essential to the
University’s competence in the last decades. The asset of
human capital and monetary resources in Alumni Relations
prepares the university with more convenience for
scholarships, research projects, laboratories, libraries, new
programs, endowments, and new capital. Alumni are also
the primary nominees in becoming parents which can be of
help to the University when it comes to increasing the
number of incoming students (Cummins 2013). In addition,
graduates can also be good resources for present 1.3. Conceptual Framework
students regarding career guidance, work experience
opportunities, and workplace mentoring. Alumni Data is
The researchers gathered the data from two sources AIS and
also a big factor in establishing a good graduate tracer
STEPS. The data from the AIS are from the internal source
with the alumni’s job status. Knowing the current job status
which is the Office of Alumni Relations, it contains the Alumni
of an alumnus can help the University in monitoring the
registered in the system, it holds the personal information,
employment of its alumni from graduation to their first job
contact information, employment history, awards, and
experiences, it will be a great factor in determining the
recognition. Refer to the diagram below.
effectiveness of the curriculum, accreditation of programs,
and teaching strategies in preparing the students for
employment.

1.1. Purpose and Objective

The main objective is to create an analytical dashboard that

provides predictive and descriptive analysis in anticipation
for the accumulating data gathered by OAR that can be
beneficial to colleges, faculties, and institutes of the
University of Santo Tomas.To meet the general objectives,
the researchers focused on the following:
1. Identify what attributes highly affect the interval time of
IICS and Engineering graduates in terms of getting their first
jobs using a Point Biserial correlation technique;
2. Identify what sector, either private or government the UST
IICS and Engineering graduates are affiliated after
graduation;
3. Identify if the career of the IICS and Engineering
graduates are in line with the major they took; and
4. Predict average interval time between graduation and first
job employment of IICS and Engineering graduates using
time series analysis.
1.2. Scope and Project Constraints
Figure 1 Conceptual Framework of the study
Oracle is composed of all the graduates from the previous
batches until the present classified per batch because until
now STEPS does not have a feature wherein they can extract
the data per semester. The Oracle data were extracted in
PDF format while the AIS data were extracted in .csv format.
In the ETL process, data cleaning and data consolidation
occurred in RStudio after which, the selecting of the important
variables for the analysis took place and an ETL report was
generated in .xlsx format. Then it undergone data masking to
hide any vital information of the alumni which is then stored in
MySQL for backup because of the accumulating data of
OAR. R Studio and Power BI are used to explore the data
that provided results and visualizations.

The project is focused on Engineering and IICS graduates 2. METHODOLOGY

from years 2014 to 2018. The data that came from OAR
ETL Process
include Alumni data from the AIS (Alumni Information
The researchers gathered the raw data from AIS in .csv
Systems) and Oracle. The graduates with “Employed” status
format and then deliver to the ETL Process with the use of
were covered by the project and the data that were collected
Rscript and .bat file for automation. The initial process is that
from AIS. Graduates who have not registered and filled-up
removing the null values and the unnecessary attributes
the employment history form are not covered by the project.
from the data. The researchers then rename the attribute for
The researchers did not collect any factors regarding
standardization and derive a new attribute called
student’s general weighted average since it is confidential.
Month_Interval by getting the difference of the date of their
Soft skills were not taken into consideration since it is
graduation and their date of first job employment, also, the
beyond the data. Those who filled and registered but did not
researchers created another attribute called Age_Graduate
fill their employment history are disregarded in the analysis.
by differentiating their birthdays and dates of graduation.
Batch 2018 of engineering students have not yet filled the
From the derived attributes, the researchers detected
employee history in assumption that the graduates are
negative values from Month_Interval and Age_Graduated
preparing for the board exam and remained unemployed
caused by alumni’s error and they were eliminated. The
yet. This project uses two models only. Single Exponential
researchers then reordered their attributes to their
Smoothing and Double Exponential Smoothing. S.E.S is
respective order and export a .csv file and consolidated to
used because the present data has no trend and
other clean data and delivered dirty data reports.
seasonality. D.E.S is used assuming that there is a trend
when the data points increases.

Figure 2 Newly Consolidated Data
Figure 2 shows the output of the cleansing and
consolidation process.
Business Analytics Model and Testing
Single Exponential Smoothing (SES) and Double
Exponential Smoothing (DES) are the forecast models. The
researchers derived the mean month interval of the alumni
per year, then the mean month interval and batch were
assigned to be the variables for the forecasting models. The
package for the forecast will be installed in Rstudio. The
data will be split into two parts. 80% of the actual data will be
alloted for training, and 20% for testing. In order to
determine the accuracy of the models both SES and DES
will be performed in the training data set which allows the
user to determine the reliability of the models by comparing
the results of the training data and the testing data.
Afterwards, the researchers will perform Single Exponential
Smoothing and Double Exponential Smoothing using the
actual data set. The forecast values of each models shall be
displayed, along with the accuracy of the data, showing the
errors of the forecasts for decision-making.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 7 Time Series and Job Alignment Dashboard
The dashboard in Figure 7 contains visualized reports on
how long did the graduates for each college in an average
took of getting a job from the year 2014 to 2018 and what
would be the forecasted value based on the single
exponential smoothing (SES) and double exponential
smoothing(DES) forecasting method. This also involves the
mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean absolute
deviation (MAD), and mean squared error (MSE) of the two
forecasting method that serve as a reference to see the
accuracy and what method is more reliable. The dashboard
has also an indicator to see how much percentage of the
data was used since only alumni with employment history
are taken into account in the analysis. Moreover, this also
contains how the amount of graduates who have in line and
not in line jobs would affect the average interval time and see
the average interval time of graduates who have in line and
not in line jobs per program.
Since the data is accumulating, 26% for IICS and 19% for
Engineering was the latest percentage of data that were used
by the researchers in the analysis. 74% for IICS and 81% for
the college of Engineering have not yet filled-up their
employment history. Based on the analysis from this
dashboard, it was shown that SES was a more reliable
method with a 17.51% MAPE for Engineering and 39.65% for
IICS compared to DES with 27.50 MAPE for Engineering and
46.78 MAPE for IICS. As observed, there is a huge difference
between alumni that have in line and not In line jobs. The total
amount of alumni that have in line jobs appear to be much
higher compared to those who are not. In addition, based
from the dashboard, it can be shown that graduates that got
in line jobs have faster average month interval than those
who have not in line jobs.
Figure 8 Correlation Dashboard
Illustrated in Figure 8 are the point biserial correlation plot and the
clustered column charts that are categorized by attributes. The
dashboard contains visualized reports to identify how the attributes
namely the dean’s list, Latin honors, nationality, location, and gender
of a graduate affect and correlate to the average month interval
whether each of these attributes can contribute to decreasing the
amount of time a graduate can get his or her first job after graduation.
This dashboard can be filtered by college and by batch. It can be
observed in the dashboard that month interval has a negative
relationship with Latin honors and dean’s list. This states that as
alumni with Latin honors or dean’s list increases, the month interval
decreases in which these are found to be as one of the attributes that
can make an alumni have faster interval in getting a job. It can also
be seen that there is a big difference in the average month interval
between graduates who had achieved to be with Latin honor or a
dean’s list.
Figure 9 Dichotomous Attribute Dashboard
Illustrated in Figure 9 are the one hundred percent
stacked bar of the work sector of graduates per program
and the one hundred percent stacked bar per attribute
namely Latin honors, dean’s list, job matching (inline/not
inline), gender, nationality, and location whether they live
in National Capital Region or not. This dashboard can be
filtered by batch, college, and most especially by month
interval (0-3 months, 4-7 months, 8-11 months, and 12
months greater). The dashboard contains visualized
reports in identifying which work sector are graduates
affiliated whether private or public. Identification of the
amount of percentage from the total students based from
the monthly interval filter are composed from each
attribute. This enables OAR to generate reports that can
compare the graduates who had faster interval time and
longer interval time in getting a first job employment.
4. CONCLUSION
4.1 Descriptive
Industrial Engineering graduates take shorter time in getting
their first jobs after graduation than the graduates of other
programs being offered by the UST Faculty of Engineering
while the Civil Engineering graduates take longer time. For
the Institute of Information and Computing Science the
fastest duration of finding a job is the Information
Technology and they would only find a job within 4 months
and the longest period is the Computer Science that has an
interval of 5 months. In addition, the result shows that
majority of Faculty of Engineering graduates and Institute of
Information and Computing Sciences are in line with their job
and working in the private sector. The researchers found out
from the point biserial correlation analysis that for IICS
among the attributes, both dean’s list and Latin honors were
found to have a significant relationship with having a faster
month interval while for Engineering only Latin honors had a
significant relationship. This can be observed that
Engineering students do not solely depend on the academic
achievement that would also depend on the results of their
board exam in order to get a job faster. Furthermore, a
future study is still needed as OAR's accumulating data will
increase and attributes that were recommended in gathering
additional information to the site of Alumni Information
Systems may be added to the study in which this will lead to
new results and broader findings.
4.2 Predictive
The forecast suggests that there is a minimal decrease in
the average time interval on graduation and their first job
employment from year 2018 to year 2019 for Engineering.
The forecast implies that there are no changes in the
average time interval on graduation to first job employment
from year 2018 to year 2019 for IICS. For the analysis, the
alumni which have 0-3 month interval, the OAR may then
refer to the technical attributes which can contribute to the
early employment of the graduates, which is associated with
the descriptive analysis. Based from the results, the
attributes’ Dean’s Lister and Latin honors highly affect the
early employment of the IICS alumni, while for Engineering,
Latin honors highly contribute more than the Dean’s Lister.
Single exponential smoothing was found to be a more
suitable model for forecasting than double exponential
smoothing in which SES showed a much better result of
accuracy.
5. RECOMMENDATION
For maximizing the use of Alumni Information System in
terms of data gathering, the researchers will recommend
adding the following features on their website. The
researchers propose adding the questions "How months did it
take you before you actually tried applying for a job?" and
"Are you employed in a local or international company?".
(3,4,13) Adding a drop down list for Region and City in order
to determine the location of the alumni, drop down list for
programs that have tracks or sub-programs, and another drop
down list for college.(5) As the Dean's List and Latin honors
data are taken from the office of IICS and ENG, including a
adding a Dean's List and Latin honors to the site may help in
reducing the difficulty in data collection.(6) To determine the
irregular students/Octoberians, making a function where the
alumni may be traced per batch and not only per school year
is advisable. Data granularity is helpful in determining a more
detailed behavior of the data (8,9) Including the medical
history and medical condition of an alumni are also attributes
to consider adding since they may affect the month interval.
(14) To know when an alumni exactly graduated, adding a
month and year as to when they graduated may prove useful.
(15) Lastly for the website, adding an option to answer
whether the job they took is in line or not in line would be
convenient.(7 )Aside from the additional features to be added
in the website, the researchers highly recommend the OAR to
require the alumni to update the employment history in order
to extract more reliable data. (10)For analyzing the alumni
which have 0-3 month interval, the OAR may refer to the
technical attributes that can contribute to the early
employment of the graduates.(11) Based from the results, the
attributes of the Dean’s Lister and Latin honors highly affects
the early employment of the IICS alumni, while for
Engineering, that Latin honors highly contributes more than
Dean’s Lister.
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Achieving a Capstone project needs a huge amount of data,
heart, and time. The researchers will not accomplish this
study if it was not for the people who helped along the way.
The researchers would like to express their utmost gratitude
to the Office of Alumni Relations for their cooperation regards
to our Capstone Project. This project would not be possible
without our client’s support. The researchers would like to
thank the technical adviser, Mr. Khrisnamonte Balmeo for
lending us his time and effort in this project. The researchers
would like to thank their Capstone Coordinator, Asst. Prof.
Divinagracia R. Mariano for assisting and sharing her
expertise in the field of analytics. The researchers would also
like to thank Asst. Prof. Bernard Sanidad, Asst. Prof. Arne
Barcelo, Asst. Prof. Cabero, and Asst. Prof. Christopher D.
Ladao for standing as the panel members, providing
criticisms and areas of improvement for our study.
7. REFERENCES [5] Box, G. E. (2015). Time series analysis: Forecasting
and control. Retrieved November 3, 2018, from
[1] Nadu,T. (2017) Alumni Interaction System. Vol 5, https://books.google.com.hk/books?hl=en&lr=&i
Issue 2. Retrieved from International Journal of d=rNt5CgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Time-
Computer Science Trends and Technology. series+analysis+interval&ots=DJ51tSl1TE&sig=EQa
Retrieved November 10, 2018, from wp78GTh5nxmbKJCD1ZAaBfW0&redir_esc=y#v=o
http://www.ijcstjournal.org/volume-5/issue- nepage&q=Time-
2/IJCST-V5I2P58.pdf series%20analysis%20interval&f=false

[2] Misra, R. K. and Khurana, K. (2017) Employability [6] Voinageagu, V., Caragea C., and Pisica, S.
Skills among Information Technology (2012) “Forecasting monthly unemployment
Professionals: A Literature Review. Vol 122 pp by econometric smoothing techniques”
63-70. Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286
pii/S1877050917325711 622452_Forecasting_monthly_unemployment
_by_econometric_smoothing_techniques
[3] Zaid, M. (2015). Correlation and Regression
[7] Zaid, M. (2015). Correlation and Regression
Analysis. Retrieved February 1, 2019, from
Analysis. Retrieved February 1, 2019, from
http://www.oicstatcom.org/file/textbook- http://www.oicstatcom.org/file/textbook-
correlation-and-regression-analysis-egypt- correlation-and-regression-analysis-egypt-
en.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1Eb-PL- en.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1Eb-PL-
x3UX7HWgfAyDPds9vu- x3UX7HWgfAyDPds9vu-
l_8l4oGWxifhC_yyHKzs4YIM3oeoIJk l_8l4oGWxifhC_yyHKzs4YIM3oeoIJk

[4] Das, S., (2016) Data Science: Theories, Models, [8] Ravinder, H. V. (2013). Determining The Optimal
Algorithms, and Analytics. Retrieved November Values Of Exponential Smoothing Constants –
10, 2018, from Does Solver Really Work, 6(3). Retrieved March
https://srdas.github.io/Papers/DSA_Book.pdf 16, 2019, from
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1054363.pdf.