Anisah Abdul Wafi, Ummu Sakinah Subri, Rafeizah Mohd Zulkifli, Suriani Mohamed, Zaliza Hanapi, Ridzwan Che'Rus, Mohd Firdaus Mustaffa Kamal
Job creation is critical to the economic well-being and has become an urgent national priority. Such issue thus creates a need for further investigation to address the severe unemployment problems among graduates. The main objective of this study is to construct a TM instrument as job creators. Results from previous studies and interviews with seven experts showed that the need for TVET graduates to strengthen their talent management as job creators leads to nine main elements, namely (i) Job Adaptation Ability, (ii) Technological Ability, (iii) Team Skills, (iv) Lifelong Learning, (v) Communication Skills, (vi) Innovative Thinking, (vii) Leadership, (viii) Entrepreneurial Thinking, and (ix) Ethical and Professional Values. This study used the Modified Delphi technique to obtain experts’ agreement on the Talent Management elements and items developed based on the findings from previous studies and interviews. Their areas of expertise include career development, TVET, and industry management. The research instrument in this study was a questionnaire containing 117 items under the nine elements of TM. This study also provided an example on how to obtain the interquartile range (JAK) values via the Modified Delphi technique that was performed in the second round until agreement was reached. Based on the instrument constructed, a pilot study was conducted involving 32 respondents consisting of TVET students. The analsysis showed Cronbach’s Alpha values exceeding 0.80, subsequently proving that the constructed set of items is acceptable. This study can help graduates to identify the specific career fields that they wish to explore, encourage participation in trainings that can enhance their talents, and in turn helps to prepare themselves in becoming job creators.