ENTREPRENEUR PROFILE OF MBA STUDENTS IN EL SALVADOR (CENTRAL AMERICA)

Introduction:
There are many published studies related to the entrepreneurial phenomenon and the characteristics of the business environment that help or hinder the emergence and development of entrepreneurs. On the other hand, there are few studies that analyze how entrepreneurs develop the characteristics that define them as such and the relationship between university education and growth of individual entrepreneurial profile. The challenge of this type of analysis lies in the wide variety of factors affecting the development of skills and individual capacities and contribute to the consolidation of the entrepreneurial spirit of young people during the period of university education.

Objectives:
Two complementary objectives have been defined for this research. On the one hand, it has developed a questionnaire to assess behavior related to entrepreneurial skills and has adapted another questionnaire that assesses personal characteristics and entrepreneurial behavior of university graduate students. On the other hand, students who have participated in the study have been grouped profile considering their skills and entrepreneurial characteristics and subsequently analyzed the differences between defined groups.

Methodology:
A questionnaire was developed to evaluate the personal characteristics and entrepreneurial behavior of university graduate students. The questionnaire contains an adaptation of the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) prrepared by Gosling et al. (2003), an adaptation of the Measure of Entrepreneurial Tendencies and Abilities (META) prepared by Ahmetoglu et al. (2011), and a questionnaire crafted from thirteen selected observed behaviors that contains the list of entrepreneurial behaviors proposed by Villa and Poblete (2007). This compound questionnaire was completed by 94 MBA students from the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" of El Salvador.

Results:
The analysis of the results obtained with the sample confirms the existence of a more entrepreneurial profile and a less entrepreneurial profile. There is also evidence and meaningful relationships between personal characteristics, some trends and entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurial behavior of students with these profiles.

Conclusions:
The MBA studies further promote the development of entrepreneurial profile in students with certain characteristics and behaviors rather than other students with different characteristics and behaviors. Postgraduate training is important in the development of entrepreneurial profile, but it is not only contributing factor to the development and emergence of entrepreneurs.