A method and apparatus for generating normalized occupations for job titles at a job aggregation system is described. The method may include receiving a job title having a plurality of words that make up the job title, the job title received as part of a request of a job aggregation system to perform a service. The method may also include translating the plurality of words into standardized terms of the job aggregation system to generate a translated job title. Furthermore, the method may include mapping the translated job title to one of a plurality of normalized occupations of the job aggregation system by a machine learning based classifier of the translated job title, wherein the machine learning based classifier is trained based on user search behavior of users that have searched for jobs at the job aggregation system.