Nurturing Future-Ready Talent by Understanding the Role of Talents' Sustainable and Professional Digital Persona on Hiring Decisions

Social media has become an essential source for hiring professionals to screen and cybervet potential employees. However, talents in Malaysia are unaware of this practice and how negative content can impact their career prospects. This study focuses on leveraging talent's identity to create sustainable and professional digital persona. It aims to investigate the reasons why sustainable and professional digital persona of job seekers impacts the decision-making process of recruiters when selecting candidates. Through qualitative interviews, this study found significant impact of a job candidate's digital persona on recruiters' selection decisions, emphasising the importance of character assessment, communication skills, cultural fit evaluation, consistency, and the use of LinkedIn as the primary platform for professional networking. Understanding on the need of sustainable and professional digital persona in job hunting can further contribute towards the improvement of digital recruitment process for productive employment and sustainable economic growth in Malaysia, in line with SDG8.