Determining similarities among industries to enhance job searching

A social networking server comprising:

• a memory with instructions;
• a member database storing member information that comprises a member industry from a plurality of industries;
• a jobs database storing a plurality of job applications, each job application being submitted by a member for a job in a company, the job having a job industry from the plurality of industries;
• and
• one or more computer processors, wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more computer processors, cause the one or more computer processors to perform operations comprising:
• accessing the plurality of job applications;
• performing semantic analysis of the job applications by a machine-learning program to identify similarity coefficients among the plurality of industries, the semantic analysis involving analyzing pairings of member industry to job industry in the job applications;
• receiving a job search query from a first member, the job search query including a query industry from the plurality of industries;
• expanding the job search query with industries that are similar to the query industry;
• executing the expanded job search query to generate a plurality of job results;
• and
• causing presentation on a display of one or more of top job results.

A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

• accessing, by a social networking server having one or more processors, a plurality of job applications, each job application being submitted by a member for a job in a company, the member having a member industry from a plurality of industries and the job having a job industry from the plurality of industries;
• performing, by the social networking server, semantic analysis of the job applications by a machine-learning program to identify similarity coefficients among the plurality of industries, the semantic analysis involving analyzing pairings of member industry to job industry in the job applications;
• receiving, by the social networking server, a job search query from a first member, the job search query including a query industry from the plurality of industries;
• expanding, by the social networking server, the job search query with industries that are similar to the query industry;
• executing, by the social networking server, the expanded job search query to generate a plurality of job results;
• and
• causing presentation on a display of one or more of top job results.