Workplace learning is crucial for both–organizational and personal development. It enhances employee skills and fosters innovation. Moreover, workplace learning contributes to professional development, helping individuals advance their careers and maintain relevance in their fields. However, when matching employees to specific project roles, in most cases, only the current skill level of an employee is considered. The skills an employee is interested in learning are often neglected. In our study, we present an AI-based system for matching employees to project roles in an IT environment not only based on skills but also their interests as interests are an important motivator for workplace learning. We analyze whether considering interests improves the matching between employees and projects from two perspectives: one investigating the employee’s perspective and the other the project manager’s. The presented model was evaluated focusing on the IT domain. In our study, we collected profiles of IT professionals and role requirements, which were used to generate personalized recommendations for employee-project matching. Our results show that 80.0% of the IT specialists, as well as 71.4% project managers responsible for specifying the role requirements and matching of the IT specialists, prefer recommendations made by a model that considers employees’ interests.