VDAB — Flemish Public Employment Service AI for job matching and employability assessment

VDAB, the Flemish Public Employment Service serving about 1.8 million jobseekers, has progressively deployed AI since 2018: a deep-learning job-matching engine, the Jobbereik occupation-visualisation tool, an ML-personalised Orient 2.0 orientation assessment, and a 2024 employability-probability model covering all registered jobseekers.

Orient 2.0 cut assessment completion time from 45 to 10 minutes and questions from 114 to 58, attracting 10,000 users within two weeks of launch; the August-September 2024 employability model assessed all 213,429 registered Flemish jobseekers, finding 18% with a >50% employment probability and 56% with a <35% probability. No published algorithmic audit or independent evaluation links AI use to actual employment outcomes.