Listen to the Companies: Exploring BIM Job Competency Requirements by Text Mining of Recruitment Information in China

Building information modeling (BIM) is a pivotal technology to realizing the digital transformation of the construction industry. Lack of BIM professionals, however, is one of the reasons the application of BIM technology in the construction industry is hindered. Identifying BIM competency requirements is critical for BIM professionals’ training. This paper uses the structural topic model (STM) to mine the topics of BIM recruitment information to deeply understand the BIM competency requirements from a 360° view of the construction industry. The company size, salary level, year of experience, and education in BIM recruitment information are taken as covariates to examine their impact on BIM recruitment topic prevalence. And the changing trend of the topic prevalence and topic correlations are observed through visual analysis. The results reveal that the current BIM competency requirements in the construction industry contain three aspects: management competencies, professional and technical competencies, and personal characteristics. In particular, the requirements for BIM application, construction drawing design, and information technology (IT) skills are relatively strong, and personnel professionalism is also a concern of BIM job recruitment. Companies of different sizes have evident preferences for competencies. Salary levels and years of experience requirements also affect the intensity of corporate demand for BIM competencies. However, education is not the main factor affecting the recruitment of BIM positions. The results can provide a reliable theoretical basis for educational institutions to build a proper BIM professional course system, for companies to develop BIM job recruitment plans, and for individuals to choose their employment goals.