Abstract:

We are today at the beginning of Digital Economy, the work environment will change the job profiles and therefore requires employees with a wide range of competencies. Digital inclusion today depends largely more on competences than access to technologies. While there are challenges in getting high skilled jobs for the local workforce and the graduate unemployment rate in Malaysia was more than three times higher than national unemployment. The graduate unemployment has raised several queries on relevancy of education systems matching the industry skill needs. Industry has puzzled on skills measures to close the gap of digital skills required. Academics and policymakers call for more research to uncover the root causes of graduate unemployed. The first objective of the study is to investigate the digital skills that industry required and those unemployed graduates possess. Second objective is to develop the digital competency model as solution to unemployed graduate to boost the employability. The expected outcome is to recommend the set of digital skills that graduates required to meet the industry expectations. Also contributes policy and practices as the provided competency model that may be applicable to digital economy job descriptions in the context of Malaysia.