Disclose job placement record on NCS portal: House panel to govt

The parliamentary standing committee on labour has recommended the government to widen the scope of the National Career Services (NCS) portal by disclosing the placement record against the current practice of only revealing the data of registration/shortlisted candidates.

The NCS portal brings together jobseekers, employers, and trainers.

“The committee is of the considered view that in the absence of empirical/quantifiable data of direct employment generated through the NCS portal, accurate assessment of the outcome of the project cannot be done,” the panel has stated. 

In its response to a query regarding the placement figures of the past three years and the measures to improve the quality of workforce, the government has said that the reporting of hiring figures by employers or the placement data is not mandatory on NCS portal, and it only captures data of candidates being shortlisted by the employers. 

“The NCS portal has three main quantifiable data sets viz. number of job seekers registered, number of employers registered, and the vacancies mobilised on the portal. Further, soft skills and digital training are provided free of cost to the registered job seekers to improve the quality of workforce,” the government has responded.

Cumulatively, around 29 million jobseekers and 850,000 employers are registered on the portal, of which 4.7 million registered in FY23. 

The government has decided that the portal will now act as the primary government platform for both skilled and unskilled workers to find employment, as it is being integrated with UDYAM, the Skill India portal, and the e-Shram portal along with recruitment agencies like the Staff Selection Commission (SSC). 

Besides, the government has also informed the House panel that application programming interface (API) integration of state employment exchanges with the NCS portal has been done with 20 states and Union Territories (UTs).

Seven states/UTs are directly registering on the portal and the rest are developing their portals that will enable their integration with NCS.

The NCS project was launched in 2015 to transform the national employment service to provide a variety of job-related services such as career counselling, vocational guidance, information on skill development courses, apprenticeship, and internships. The project mainly consists of three components — NCS Portal, Model Career Centres, and Interlinking of Employment Exchanges with NCS portal.