Özet:

At the present time, choosing, educating andining a qualified human resource is a critical element facing organizations. Organization managers make an objective and accurate assessment of human resources selection in order to make their organizations more efficient and creative and for this they have to evaluate the candidates' knowledge, skills and competencies. Working life and opportunities are changing day by day and different occupations and job positions are emerging. Graduates with different qualifications and competencies are requested in the job positions. This situation requires more responsibility and necessity to have qualified and competence to graduates. Currently, policies towards shaping education according to the economy are gaining momentum throughout the world. This change has become a requirement with the change of technology, and it is pointed out that the new technologies require new knowledge and skills, and education update to meet these requirements. There is a new industrial revolution that is defined by concepts such as factories, cyber systems and the internet of objects that work with smart systems. With this revolution, it is emphasized that the business processes, the qualifications of the labor force, the production processes will change and the education must change in this direction. One of the main goals of universities is to prepare graduates for the business world. Achieving this goal successfully is challenging in all areas, but it seems more difficult for areas such as information systems (IS), information technology (IT), computer science (CS) and management information systems (MIS). Developing technologies and computer systems, it is part of the ever growing IT sector. The constantly evolving sector has variable structure, this situation leads to different business needs. As the field changes and evolves quickly, it is important for graduates to keep the faculty information updated. It is important to determine not only the new positions needed, but also the specific tasks and responsibilities needed for each of these new positions. This also requires educators to regularly change and update their curricula and course contents, so that graduates have the knowledge, skills and competencies they need to perform their tasks in business areas (Davis and Woodward, 2006:11). Today, knowledge, skills and competencies enable the diversification of career opportunities to individuals who need to create new business lines or specialization in different fields (Sönger, 2018: 10). The competence approach is implemented in many management areas such as management skills and human resources management. Managers are expected to improve their competencies in order to be efficient, human resource managers write and define job descriptions and fulfill recruitment and selection procedures by enumerating and assessing the competencies of future employees. Training and development needs are determined on the competencies required to do the job (Vokić and Rimac, 2012: 713). For the purpose of qualified, differentiating in working life, providing guidance to academic leaders who design curriculum and creating foresight for recruiting managers, this study will contribute to the literature in terms of the knowledge, skills and competencies of those graduated from Management Information Systems. The study population consists of individuals who have graduated from the department of MIS of universities in Turkey. Within the scope of the research, the online questionnaire applied to 272 people who have graduated from the MIS field and have experienced the recruitment processes in the business area, tested the processes related to the business area and have the experience to analyze the current need. Within the scope of the study, the competencies that MIS graduates should have are covered in four groups. These are soft competency, managerial competency, core technical competency and technical competency. Soft competence refers to communication competencies consisting of personal and interpersonal competencies. Interpersonal competences are the core competencies of the individual and help to solve problems (National Research Council, 2011: 63). Soft competency are qualities that characterize a person’s relationships with others. Some researchers state that interpersonal competences are the most important competence at all levels of work (Sheikh, 2009; Smith, 2007). Managerial competence refers to the competence of the function of the organization and its management levels. Organizational competency expresses the knowledge and skills to manage individual tasks and execution activities in the workflow. Core technical competency is generally considered to be the core of the IT profession. The core technical competencies provide the ground for entry into the business area. Core technical competencies, programming, testing, operating systems and database design, data mining, system analysis, system design and project management are required for the development of more advanced capabilities. Core technical competencies are the basic requirement for working in a job position in the profession. Includes basic knowledge and skills related to the field and enables the development of higher level skills and competences. Core technical competencies include system analysis, system design and IT architecture/standards. Although it is important to have these competencies to enter the profession, the importance of core technical competencies decreases as well as the individual’s experience and duty in the profession (Gallagher et al., 2010). Technical competencies include the use of information systems software, project management tools, integrated environments for software development, software development methods, and data mining tools. While the core technical competence includes the knowledge and skills that lay the groundwork for the use of such software and tools, the technical competence is reduced to more specificity, and the business processes are integrated into the information systems of technology and include the skills of using the software. MIS is an interdisciplinary program that fills the gap between information technology (IT) and business fundamentals. As an academic field of study, MIS focuses on solving business problems and enhancing the organization’s performance by designing and implementing information technology applications. Due to the interdisciplinary nature, the MIS program offers a wide range of curricula (Kroenke and Boyle, 2015). As a result of the studies and analyses, the competencies that the MIS graduates should have are examined in four categories. It is seen that the highest of the average calculated as a result of the rating of these four competency types included in the study belong to the soft competency type. When the average are ranked from the largest to the smallest, there are managerial competence in the second place, the core technical competence in the third place and the last technical competence type. Although these results seem to show that soft competencies are more important than technical competencies, there are at least two reasons for using these results as a reason to indicate the importance of technical competencies in MIS programs. First, the standard deviations of all of the technical competencies evaluated in this study were calculated higher than other competence types and as a result of hypothesis testing, technical competences differed significantly with more variables than soft competencies. Second, it tends to be complementary to the importance of competencies assessed in the type of soft competency, such as personal and interpersonal. Participants are likely to see all competencies in personal and interpersonal categories as important for their career success.