Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 26th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview VII. Public Administration Education Author(s) Oana Iucu University of Bucharest Bucharest Romania Iordache-Platis Magdalena, Title Professional Profile Design: Key Competences on Public Administration Initial Education – An Application to Managerial and Administrative Assistance’s Specialisation File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract The design process of an academic program for a specialization in which the labor market undergoes for continuous evolution and transformation in short time frames is a huge challenge. In the particular case of the new specialization, Managerial and Administrative Assistance, the history of the domain (close to the beginning of the Philological field) as well as the complexity of the professional area, through the interdisciplinary of the trained competences, represent the non-standardized benchmarks of a developing process. Taking into account that developments of European public policy documents have already proposed new approaches, it was necessary to update the competence profile to the global context of professionalization in the mentioned field. At the same time, employers' expectations and increasing demands for workplace performance required the same need for an evidenced based review. The next step was the competence profile validation, in the first phase at the level of opinion and student representation (visions), and then at the level of the representatives of the professional environment / background, (the alumnae community of the graduates who are working as assistant manager). In order to validate the opinion of the two categories directly targeted by our research, we have designed a research strategy based on the social survey and specific tool, the questionnaire in which the participants were asked to express their opinion by hierarchizing / ranking the importance of competencies listed to ensure professional success in assistant manager career. The sample / the survey population consisted of 109 students in the first years of study in the Managerial and Administrative Assistant and 19 graduates already working in the mentioned professional field (10% of the initial sample), using and applying some of the competences trained during the years university / college studies (graduates from older promotions). The limits of our research are given by the comprehensively unsatisfactory sample, especially for graduates working in the professional field and able to provide consistent feedback to validate a set of skills and abilities. As a result of the data processing, an interesting distribution could be noticed, which places, in a non-traditional way, the response options of the respondents. From a comprehensive perspective, the first and last options are in the form of clear differences in favor of the most experienced professionals. The differences, between the field novices and those who are already in the profession, from the graduate position, are large enough. They are focused on attitudes towards those competencies that are more relevant to the more refined dimensions of the profession. The overall findings of our research are positioned to support the main idea of this study. Our contribution was centered on the idea of being able to design a profile of key competencies for this professional area to be found in the initial training programs proposed by universities for the specialization: Managerial and administrative assistance and to strengthen the presence of this specialization in the field of administrative sciences / studies, which belongs not only through the immediate professional effects but also through the logical validation of the occupational profile, which we have demonstrated.
