How to encode a job description for machine learning I'm working on a sample project and one of the features is the job description of a person (categorical, for example: blue-collar, retired, unknown, unemployed, student, etc.). Since in the future more job descriptions could be used, I don't think one hot encoding it's the best approach. How would you encode it without using one hot encoding??
I would first start by using something like scikit-learn LabelEncoder. Examples are in the documentation.

EDITED : With this option, you convert every string to a integer starting from 1.

You can also think about trying to convert the strings into hash values.