WCSE

Examining Competencies of Entry-Level HR Professionals: Implications for Higher Education in HR

Abstract— With the rapid advances in technology and globalization, people are faced with many challenges in the HR professions. Competencies of entry-level HR professionals also need to be surveyed, so that the gap could be decreased between higher education and practice. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to use the text mining technique to explore the competencies of entry-level human resource professionals through the use of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). Text mining-LSA is used to uncover and help understand the hidden trends and patterns from a mass dataset. Based on the results of this study, we found four major competencies (communication, skills, ability, and education) and thirteen sub factors (educational degree, communication, experience, leadership, office-software operation, teamwork relative education field, project management, presentation skills, analytical ability, certification, accepting traveling, and labor law knowledge) were proposed. The results could assist HR curriculum developers and HR educators in designing and tailoring their current curriculum to address the up-to-date competencies required for effective HR professionals. Hence, HR graduates are then best prepared for their jobs.

Index Terms— Text mining, LSA, HR professional, entry-level

Putthachat Angnakoon
Faculty of Learning Sciences and Education,Thammasat University, THAILAND
Chih-Hung Chung
Department of Educational Technology, Tamkang University, TAIWAN
Nicholas Evangelopoulos
Department of Information Technology & Decision Science, University North Texas, US
Laura A. Pasquini
Department of Learning Technology, University North Texas, US

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Cite: Putthachat Angnakoon, Chih-Hung Chung, Nicholas Evangelopoulos, Laura A. Pasquini, "Examining Competencies of Entry-Level HR Professionals: Implications for Higher Education in HR," Proceedings of 2017 the 7th International Workshop on Computer Science and Engineering, pp. 503-510, Beijing, 25-27 June, 2017.