Understanding the Future Green Workforce through a Corpus of Curricula Vitae from Recent Graduates
Authors: Francesca Nannetti, Matteo Di Cristofaro (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, 2024)
Topic: Lexical and Semantic Resources and Analysis

Abstract
In view of the much-heralded ecological transition, to stay competitive and participate in the collective effort to face global warming and climate change, organisations need to select employees interested in and able to develop environmentally sustainable and innovative ideas. The existing literature however does not present consistent nor concordant results on the effective interest, involvement and expertise of Generation Z members – namely, the newest entrants into the workforce – in green issues. This study presents a corpus-assisted methodology to explore the profile of the upcoming workforce expected to present itself to companies. With CVs as one of the first interfaces between candidate and company in the recruitment process, a purpose-built corpus consisting of Curricula Vitae from recent graduates of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia was collected. Data is investigated through a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) framework, proposing a novel interaction between structured metadata and textual information. The original contribution of this approach lies in the extraction of information from the narrative structure of CVs which, guiding the evaluation and exploration of metadata, ensures that the knowledge value of the data can be explored in a discursive manner and not reduced to lists of competences and qualifications.

Introduction
The pursuit of environmentally sustainable growth is now more prominently featured on the global policy agenda than ever before [1], and the efforts to fight climate change and to support transition towards low or net-zero carbon energy systems have manifested over the last decade through the increasing release of international agreements and strategies striving for a more sustainable future [2]. Achieving a successful transition to a more sustainable economy, however, requires not only government intervention policies, but also a new generation workforce [3] that should be composed of individuals able to deal with complex issues and ambiguous situations associated with sustainable development in unpredictable and often rapidly changing circumstances [4]. Consequently, to stay competitive and participate in the collective effort to face global warming and climate change, organisations need to attract, identify, select and attempt to retain individuals interested in and able to develop green and innovative solutions [5]. Even though by 2025 27% of the workforce will be comprised of individuals from Generation Z [6] - namely, those born roughly between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s –, and despite the growing body of research on this topic [7], the existing literature does not present consistent nor concordant results on the effective interest, involvement and expertise of Generation Z in sustainable and environmental issues [8, 9]. Therefore, this study proposes a corpus-assisted methodology to explore the Gen Z members’ profile as the newest entrants into the workforce, particularly considering the need for a large and well-qualified workforce to effectively manage the ecological transition. Given the crucial role played by universities in educating and shaping the next generation of professionals [10], a sample of recent graduate (2022-2023) has been identified as consistent and representative. Moreover, since in the very early stages of the selection process screening applicants’ Curricula Vitae (CVs) is a widely used recruitment practice to shortlist the best candidates [11], CVs constitute the first documented interface between people and companies. Hence, this research is based on a purpose-built corpus [12] consisting of 8,096 Curricula Vitae from students who received a certified title at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia during the 2022/2023 academic year, collected from the AlmaLaurea database. AlmaLaurea is an interuniversity Consortium representing 82 Italian universities, aimed at facilitating graduates’ access to the job market by helping them to connect with companies. In this regard, one of the main services is the database of students’ Curricula Vitae. Data is investigated through a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) framework - that “set of studies into the form and/or function of language as communicative discourse which incorporate the use of computerised corpora in their analyses” [13] - serving a novel methodological approach impinging on the interaction between CVs structured metadata and textual information.

Conclusion
The current contribution of this paper is mainly methodological and theoretical, since, starting from a gap in the literature, it proposes to collect and analyse a large number of Curricula Vitae with a novel approach impinging on the underlying narrative dimension of these documents, a procedure that requires to triangulate metadata and textual information, and to make use of both linguistic tools and data science techniques. Despite the reliance on standard approaches, the resulting combination offers both linguists and data scientists a novel perspective on CVs, ensuring that the knowledge value of the data can be explored in a discursive manner and not reduced to lists of competences and qualifications. Preliminary examples show the ability of this method to provide the means to build a profile of the generation described by the data. Additionally, the resulting details may provide interesting insights to companies seeking to engage recent graduates in supporting the ecological transition.