Paper Title
Employers` Expectations Of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Skills Of Geography Graduates: A Case Of Turkey

Abstract
This study aims at examining what kind of GIS competencies geography graduates should have for finding a position in GIS or GIS related sectors when they graduated from their geography programs from an employer`s perspective. Keeping this objective in mind, a 43-item questionnaire is prepared as a main data collection tool in 5-likert scale and applied to employers, managers, directors who are authorized to employ people in public and private GIS job sector. Results indicated that the GIS skill sets including Internet and GIS, Data Management and Data Production are the most favorite ones among the respondents respectively. More specifically, “Map presentation skills by using ready templates on the Internet”, “Using map services, Web-Map, and Web Feature server information on the Internet”, “Transferring present data to databases”, and “Data analysis with inquiry transaction (attribute and spatial query) and report generalization” are the most required skills by the GIS job market. However, the skills including “Basic information about geoids”, “Ellipsoids used to present the globe”, and “Construction plan information” were the skills that participants considered less important. Index Terms - GIS skills, work place, employers, geography graduates.