Competencies Required for Accountancy Professionals as Perceived by Graduating Accountancy Students and Employers: A Basis for Parities and Disparities Analysis.

Employability is about graduates possessing an appropriate level of skills and attributes and being able to use them to gain and remain in appropriate employment. This has become a more important issue not only for employers, but also for universities and colleges because of the changing nature of the graduate labor market. The study-related, as well as technical and generic job skills acquired by the graduating accountancy students and required by the employers within the four sectors- Government, Academe, Public Firm, & Commerce and Industry in Lucena City are the focus of this study. It is motivated by the factor that whether the knowledge, skills, and values acquired by the graduating accountancy students cope up with the globalization and industrialization that influence the expectations of the employers in their prospective employees. This quantitative-descriptive study was conducted on 71 graduating accountancy students and selected number of employers in Lucena City through purposive sampling. Data were collected by a separate valid and reliable questionnaires for graduating accountancy students and for the employers. Collected data sets were analyzed by T-test in MS Excel. Major findings suggest that, two employers acknowledged the importance of technical and generic job skills, while the other two require and employee to be more equipped with the study related skills and knowledge. In relation to the similarities of skills between the perceived acquired and required of students and employers, respectively, the greatest areas of skills with slightly higher level of mismatch were those of information and technology, accounting and finance knowledge and professional ethics of graduating accountancy students.