Knowledge, skills and competencies of graduates of management information systems department

Differentiation of the labour force and the raising of well-equipped graduates have become important when the developments in recent years have been taken into consideration together with the requirements of the technology age and the increasing world population. Observed that the upbringing of well-equipped graduates, their differences among their rivals and their strong positions in the sector, depend on the competencies of the graduates. Graduates need to be able to combine all the knowledge with the skills they have to know all the abilities of the field and to reach the sufficient maturity required by the business life. This study aims to, should have graduated from the department of Management Information Systems sector in Turkey and in the information being sought is the identification of skills and competencies. Accordance with this aim, survey was applied to 272 graduates who have graduated from Management Information Systems Department and working in the business area. The survey used in the study is adapted from the Wilkerson (2012), which defines the job skills of the graduates of the Management Information Systems Department. The statements in the survey were updated in accordance with the current technology knowledge and the literature. In this study, quantitative research method was used and participants evaluated their competence levels in 5-point Likert type scale structure. As a result of the factor analysis conducted to examine the factor structure of the 53 statements evaluated as a result of the survey, the competences were evaluated in four categories as social competence, managerial competence, basic technical competence and basic competence. As a result of the analysis of the findings obtained from the study, the soft competence levels of the graduates, including their personal and interpersonal competencies, were higher than their other competencies. The three most important expressions of competence expressions are in soft competence, 1) performing the tasks assigned, 2) learning new skills and concepts, 3) listening to others. As a result of hypothesis testing; It is seen that the technical competencies of the graduates differ significantly according to the gender variable, their promotion in current job positions, their experience in the sector, their income levels and the university they graduated from. It has been observed that managerial competence levels differ according to undergraduate and graduate education levels and those who are promoted to work position have a higher average in managerial competence type. Observed a significant relationship between the graduates' income levels and their experiences, and it was seen that having internship experience and income levels did not differ for any type of competence.