A Computer Aided Approach to Employment Service Placement and Counseling

An employment service ideally should enable workers to maximize their monetary and psychic job satisfactions and employers to maximize their productivity for each dollar or labor cost. Electronic computers can make their greatest contribution to this effort if they are programmed so as to maximize the extent to which the objectives of workers and employers are fulfilled. This paper seeks to develop a formal optimizing approach using functional estimates of the satisfactions and productivities and of the probabilities of job offers and acceptances. Making these concepts operational appears feasible, but substantial research will be needed. The socio-economic payoffs appear to justify the cost of such research. The employment service operations proposed in the article include a man-machine system in which the computer serves as aide to the placement counselor.