Narendra Modi launches National Career Service portal

New Delhi: Move over frayed employment exchanges, the Union government is out with a new job website. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the government’s job board called National Career Service (NCS) portal on Monday.

In the pipeline for the last four years, the government job board will be a next-generation online employment exchange. The labour ministry has readied it with an investment of over ₹ 100 crore and it aspires to be a one-stop shop solution for job seekers and job providers.

The portal aims to bring on board around 20 million job seekers already registered with employment exchanges across India. It also aspires to bring 900,000 establishments and companies on the portal. Currently, more than 44.7 million job seekers are registered with India’s 956 employment exchanges. Of them, at least 26.88 million are men and women below the age of 29, according to official data. The labour ministry believes the rationalization of number could bring down the overall number of registrations.

The NCS will offer registration for job aspirants and employers for free. But to avoid misuse, the labour ministry will ask job seekers to link their Aadhar number when registering with the website. Similarly, companies and organizations need to submit their society registrations or company registration certificate copies while getting empanelled on the job portal.

Since, it’s a Union government initiative and Modi is taking interest in it, all central government ministries and departments and state-run enterprises will be persuaded to post their job vacancies through it. Private companies will also be encouraged to do the same.

The job board shall have facilities like job posting, career counselling, aptitude assessment, job matching, skill courses, training providers and guidance on self-employment and entrepreneurship. The facilities will be on offer over the next few months.

A labour ministry official said three key government initiatives—Make in India, Digital India and Skill India—can help this job board draw job seekers and employers. The skill development and entrepreneurship ministry and the ministry of small and medium enterprises will be key partners of this initiative.

“Job portals are not new in India but if the ministry can maintain it well, it can be a great support system for everybody. Jobs of all types—blue collar and white collar—should be available on it. The main challenge is that it has to live up to competition from private players,” another government official said.

Modi had spoken about mapping job requirements before providing skill training in India and, if implemented well, this portal and the upcoming career service centres can play a role, said the government official.

India created 59.9 million jobs between 1999 and 2004, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in power. Under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UP, 1.1 million jobs were created between 2004 and 2010, and 13.9 million jobs between 2009 and 2012, according to official data.