Soft Skills versus Technical Skills: Finding the Right Balance for an IS Curriculum

Continuous improvement and development of a curriculum is an essential part of the success of information systems academic departments. In the current study, we facilitated focus group sessions with information technology executives to identify the critical skills they seek when hiring entry-level MIS graduates. The results follows the general trend that has recently been seen throughout the IT industry, as seven of the top ten skills were soft in nature, two were system skills, and only one could be accurately categorized as highly technical in nature.