AMEO - Aspiring Minds' Employment Outcomes 2015

India produces 1.5 million engineers every year. A relevant question is what determines the salary and the jobs these engineers are offered right after graduation. Various factors such as college grades, candidate skills, proximity of the college to industrial hubs, the specialization one is in, market conditions for specific industries determine this. 

The dataset contains various information about a set of engineering candidates and their employment outcomes. For every candidate, the data contains both the profile information along with their employment outcome information. Candidate Profile Information includes: 

• Scores on Aspiring Minds’ AMCAT – a standardized test of job skills. The test includes cognitive, domain and personality assessments
• Personal information like gender, date of birth, etc.
• Pre-university information like high school grades, high school location
• University information like GPA, college major, college reputation proxy.
• Demographic information like location of college, candidates’ permanent location

Employment Outcome Information includes:

• First job annual salary
• First job title
• First job location

This is the only data set where we have employment outcomes together with scores on a standardized job test, which makes this very unique. Other such data sets either do not test scores at all or scores on pre-university tests

Data Collection

A million undergraduates take AMCAT every year as a way to get job credentials and feedback to improve themselves. Candidates are tested on the following skills –

• English Language, Logical Ability and Quantitative Ability – these are IRT based adaptive modules. More information here on what IRT based adaptive tests are.
• Personality – Big Five based personality instrument. More information here.
• Skill tests – Chosen by candidates based on their interest

These assessments are validated against on-job performance and show a validity between 0.3-0.55 (Learn more about test validity here - http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Evaluating-performance/A-guide-to-standardized-testing-The-nature-of-assessment). These scores are used by 2000+ companies. 

Random AMCAT takers were surveyed via email wherein they provided information on the dependent variables in this dataset – the jobs they are in and their corresponding annual salaries. Corresponding independent information about the candidates was recorded at the time of them taking AMCAT.