National Career Service (NCS), a labour and employment ministry project, has joined hands with TCS iON to provide free-of-cost online skill training to registered job seekers.

TCS iON is a strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services focused on manufacturing industries, educational institutions and examination boards. It provides technology through the IT-as-a-service model, offering end-to-end business solutions.

“NCS is now offering free online career skills training in partnership with TCS iON for its registered job seekers,” according to a statement by the labour ministry. 

This course on soft skills assists the learners in enhancing personality development with modules on corporate etiquette, improving interpersonal skills, making impactful presentations, including other necessary soft skills demanded by the industry.

The training module is available in Hindi and English on the NCS portal.

This assumes significance in view of the ongoing lockdown to fight COVID-19. 

National Career Service

National Career Service (NCS) is one of the mission mode projects under the umbrella of e-governance plan. It was established in 2015.

The ministry is implementing the NCS project to transform national employment service to provide a variety of employment-related services such as job search, job matching, career counselling, vocational guidance, information on skill development courses, apprenticeship and internships through a web portal.

NCS also repositions the existing 978 employment exchanges into career centers as the hub of career related services.

The focus areas of NCS are:

* Enhancing career and employment opportunities. 

* Counselling and guidance for career development.

* Focusing on decent employment.

* Enhancing female labour force participation. 

* Encouraging entrepreneurial endeavours. 

There are around one crore active job seekers and 54,000 active employers registered on the NCS portal and around 73 lakh vacancies have been filled through the portal so far, it added. 

Around 1,000 employment exchanges, including 200 model career centres, across the country are integrated with NCS.

NCS has also taken a number of other initiatives to mitigate the challenges in the labour market due to COVID-19 and the consequent lockdown of the economy.

Online job fairs are being organised to bridge the gap between job aspirants and employers where the complete cycle from job posting to selection of candidate can be completed on the portal. Around 76 such fairs have been conducted by NCS during the lockdown period.

A special link for ‘work from home’ jobs and online training has been created on the NCS portal to give direct access to job seekers to such jobs.

NCS also offers the functionality of creation of video profiles for job-seekers in partnership with HireMee, a platform that provides online assessment and hiring services. Job-seekers can showcase their ability to recruiters using short video clips. All services on NCS are free. 

In order to promote women empowerment, NCS provides various features for helping women connect with the right opportunities. A specific title ‘jobs for women’ has been featured on NCS portal home page to help them easily search and apply to relevant jobs.

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