A majority of professionals worldwide say that maintaining a professional online presence is crucial, revealed a recent poll.

The latest Global Web Poll findings conducted by recruitment consultancy firm Robert Walters showed that 69 per cent or 24,480 respondents recognised the importance of maintaining a professional presence online.

This was followed by 20.4 per cent of respondents finding it not important and only 10.2 per cent of respondents indicating that it was not something they think about.

The poll question is posted on Robert Walters' website, which features a career-related question each month.

For this poll, it asked: "How important do you consider maintaining a professional online presence on personal social networking websites is, in the event prospective employers check them?"

The results included a total of 35,280 responses from visitors to the websites around the world.

A total of 19 countries were polled. Within Asia, countries included China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Korea.

The poll found that in Singapore, 69 per cent of professionals feel that it is important to maintain a professional image online, which is on a par with the global average.

In Malaysia, 71 per cent recognised the importance of maintaining a professional presence online. And in Hong Kong, the figures dipped slightly to 67 per cent.

Robert Walters said that with the advent of the digital era, it has become increasingly easy for employers to find potential candidates through social networking sites or by running a simple search engine background check.

It advises that professionals should ideally maintain a positive image online, especially if they are frequent users of social networking sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn.

rchia@sph.com.sg