Job market intermediation in mind, Centre upgrading nearly forgotten NCS portal
The portal is an umbrella that brings together job seekers and employers, career counsellors and placement organisations and even government departments in a single entity
National Career Service, a nine-year-old portal to link youths with prospective employers that has moved out of focus is about to get an efficiency boost with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), the Business Standard has reported. The Union Ministry of Labour and Employment is working on an upgraded version of the portal NCS 2.0, and the relaunch could take around six to nine months, two senior government officials told the newspaper on conditions of anonymity.
To improve data segregation, the new version would have micro sites for states and districts. Explaining the utility of the segregation, one of the officials said, “This will help in building a network starting from the district to the state and the country. As a result, the data will be centralised and on a single portal. It will help job seekers connect with local jobs and the kind of skill sets in demand.”
The portal is an umbrella that brings together job seekers and employers, career counsellors and placement organisations and even government departments in a single entity.
According to data from the portal, the number of active employers in the platform rose from 8 lakh to 15 lakh between FY23 and FY24. The number of job seekers shortlisted increased from 57 lakh in FY23 to 87 in FY24. The vacancies mobilised zoomed from 34 lakh in FY23 to 1.09 crore.
Among the sectors with most vacancies finance and insurance appear at the top with 46.7 lakh, while manufacturing rank at the bottom with 6.8 lakh. Civil construction works with 11.7 lakh and operations & support with 14.5 lakh appear in between.
As it stands now, NCS is linked to more than 50 portals. Among these are Udyam for MSMEs, Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), E-Shram, private job portals like TeamLease and Monster.com.
Besides these, job portals from 22 states are also using it. “The revamped version of the mortal is expected to be efficient in terms of job matching since it will be driven by AI. The request for NCS 2.0 has been floated,” said one of the bureaucrats.
“The surge in job vacancies underscores the resilience of the economy and it’s a gradual recovery from the challenges posed by the global pandemic. As industries adapt to new norms and embrace digital transformation, diverse opportunities are emerging across sectors. These range from technology and healthcare to manufacturing and hospitality,” read the portal.
“At a time when technologies such as Al and ML made great inroads in the field of recruitment, NCS portal quite lost the plot as it did not undergo any major revamp. It’s a welcome step that the government is now looking to upgrade the portal,” Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder, Teamlease Services told the newspaper.