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Suppose we have $n$ candidates from a candidate pool $\{1,2, .., n\}$ and we have $m$ departments. A candidate can be assigned to at most one department (so not being assigned is possible). Each department $d$ is considering candidates in $C_d \subseteq \{1, 2, ... n\}$ (with possible overlap between departments), and that each department $d$ must hire exactly $r_d$ of the $|C_d|$ candidates it is considering. The problem is to find an assignment of candidates to departments.

The question: Is this a NP-complete problem?

My instinct is yes- it is clearly NP at least.

I am trying to look for a suitable NP-reduction; the NP-complete problems I am familiar with and expected to use are 3-SAT, Independence Set (finding a maximal independent subset of vertices of a graph), Vertex Cover (finding a minimal vertex cover of a graph), Partition (partitioning a multiset into two subsets with equal sum) and 3-Coloring.

The most promising is 3-SAT I think, where I can make each literal a candidate and each clause a department.

So for instance if I have $(x_1 \lor \neg x_2 \lor x_3) \land (\neg x_4 \lor x_5)$

Then I will have $5$ candidates, $2$ departments each requiring one candidate and the first department, for instance looking from the candidate pool $\{x_1, x_3\}$ (not $x_2$ since the first clause has $\neg x_2$). This has two big problems in that I'm not sure what to do with the $\neg$ literals, and these may have overlap between clauses (which would cause a candidate being assigned to more than one apartment).

But then I'm not sure how I would use the other problems.

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Your problem is not $NP$-complete because it is not a decision problem and hence it is not even in $NP$. Moreover your problem is not $NP$-hard, unless $P=NP$. In fact, your problem can be solved in polynomial time.

To do so, create a bipartite graph $G=(U+V, E)$ where $U=\{1,\dots,n\}$ represents candidates and $V$ contains $r_d$ pairs $(d, 1), \dots, (d, r_d)$ for each department $d=1,\dots, m$. Intuitively $(d, j)$ represents the $j$-th position to be filled by department $d$. Finally, $E$ contains the edge $(i, (d,j))$ if and only if $i \in C_d$. (Notice that the size of $G$ is polynomial in the size of the instance since we can assume w.l.o.g. that $r_d \le |C_d| \le n$).

Your problem is now equivalent to finding a $V$-perfect matching of $G$. This problem can be solved in polynomial-time (for example by adding a "source" vertex $s$ adjacent to all vertices in $U$, a "target" vertex $t$ adjacent to all vertex in $V$, setting all edges capacities to $1$, and trying to push $\sum_{d=1}^m r_d$ units of flow from $s$ to $t$).

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  • $\begingroup$ I should've been clearer- it is a decision problem in that the question asks- "is there such an assignment?" $\endgroup$
    – Estaban
    Apr 29, 2022 at 19:23
  • $\begingroup$ But I understand your solution. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Estaban
    Apr 29, 2022 at 19:26
  • $\begingroup$ if you don't mind I was wondering if you could help me with a variation on this problem which I don't think can be reduced to a flow problem: It is similar to the above, except you disregard the $r_d$, and say that the departments want to hire all of the respective $C_d$. This might not be possible for all depts at once so the question becomes: is there an assignment that satisfies $k$ departments at once for a $k < m$? Is this new problem NP complete? $\endgroup$
    – Estaban
    Apr 29, 2022 at 19:41
  • $\begingroup$ That problem is NP-complete by a reduction from exact 3-cover [Garey & Johnson, SP2]: in this problem you are given an universe $X$ of $3\eta$ elements and a collection $C$ of sets, where each sets contains exactly 3 elements from $X$. The goal is to decide whether there is a subset $C'$ of $C$ such that $\cup_{S\in C'} S =X$ (clearly $|C'|=\eta$). In your case the $n=3\eta$ candidates are the elements in $X$, $m=|C|$, and the generic $d$-th set in $C$ corresponds to the set $C_d$ for the $d$-th department. The goal is to satisfy $k=\eta$ departments (or, equivalently, hiring all employees). $\endgroup$
    – Steven
    Apr 29, 2022 at 21:57

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