The Ministry is implementing the National Career Service (NCS) Project as a Mission Mode Project for transformation of the National Employment Service to provide a variety of employment related services like career counselling, vocational guidance, information on skill development courses, apprenticeship, internships etc. The NCS Portal (www.ncs.gov.in) was dedicated to the Nation by Hon'ble Prime Minister of India on 20.07.2015. The NCS Portal is supported by a dedicated helpline (multi-lingual) available from Tuesday to Sunday (8:00 A.M. to 8 P.M.) on 1514 for assisting users.

The National Career Services (NCS) initiative aims to address the gaps in the employment market by strategic interventions and partnership with leading institutions and organizations, improving decent employment, enhancing quality of workforce, enhancing female labour force participation, entrepreneurial endeavors, informal to formal transition, engaging with rural workforce for higher productivity, re-employment opportunities etc.

NCS is a one-stop solution that provides a wide array of employment and career related services to the citizens of India. It works towards bridging the gap between candidates and employers; candidates seeking training and career guidance and agencies providing training and career counseling.

The main objectives of NCS project are as follows:

· Enhancing career and employment opportunities

· Counselling and guidance for career development

· Enhancing quality of workforce

· Focusing on inclusive growth initiatives

1.International Vacancies

NCS portal has provisioned to collect international job preference based on occupation and regional preference. The international vacancies are posted by the NCS registered recruitment agencies on the NCS portal. The registered jobseekers having matching skills are recommended to apply for the posts if they are interested.

2.Employability Trainings

In partnership with the pioneers in the industry, NCS organizes various training program to augment the employability skills, cognitive as well as non-cognitive, of the jobseekers. Details of the employability training available on NCS portal for providing soft skill training and digital skills training are given below:

a) Career Skills Training by TCS iON

National Career Service (NCS) partnered with TCS iON, a strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. to offer its registered jobseekers a free, self-paced Online Training Program on “Career Skills”, which will equip the learners with an array of soft skills. The course is available in Hindi and English and covers modules like corporate etiquette, effective e-mail writing, preparing impactful presentations, Corporate Telephone Etiquette etc.

b) “DigiSaksham” Job skills Training by Microsoft

National Career Service partnered with Microsoft India and launched Digisaksham, a joint digital skills initiative for employability through digital skills. The project is focused on empowering the youth from rural & semi-urban areas to acquire digital skills, with a focus on rural and socially disadvantaged youth for better career opportunities. The free-of-cost online trainings are conducted in two modes viz. self-paced training and Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT) on various courses of Microsoft such as Excel, Azure, Security Fundamentals etc. for enhancing the employability of the NCS registered candidates.

3. Career Counsellors

NCS Portal provides online career counselling and vocational guidance services to its registered users. This service aims to equip the jobseeker with necessary information that is required to make right career choices based on his/her qualification, skill set and interest. The NCS Portal provides an opportunity to browse through the list of the approved counsellors and book an appointment with them. Counselling services would be made available on face-to-face basis or via online platforms. The main aim of career counselling is to assist the job seekers in choosing a field that is in tune with their skills and their career expectations. The NCS Project also envisages offering vocational guidance services through empanelled Vocational Guidance (VG) Experts, having requisite experience and expertise.

Apart from the online counselling services, NCS Portal also provides on ground counselling services through its country wide network of Model Career Centers. Ministry of Labour and Employment has deployed trained Young Professionals and Counsellors at its various Model Career Centers under National Career Service Scheme who offer specialized Individual and Group Career Counselling. The policy for onboarding of Career counsellors may be seen at (www.ncs.gov.in).

4. Career Information Content

NCS provides detailed career information across 52 sectors, on various job roles under each sector for use by Job aspirants. Career information under each sector has been made available in both video and text form on the Portal. For each sector, the videos focus on broad career streams and disciplines within a sector while the text information shares in-depth information about various job roles within that sector. Over 3600 Job roles that have been covered in total on NCS under various sectors are based on the National Classification of Occupation-2015, which is a compendium for occupational information available in the Indian Economy. NCO codes facilitate in making information in the Employment market more transparent and objective.

5. Job-fairs organized by Career Centres

Job fairs are organized at Model Career Centres (MCCs) for facilitating the jobseekers to meet with the employers and thereafter leading to their placement. In turn, the employers who are searching for the right skills could find suitable candidates from the job fairs. In MCCs the job-fairs are being regularly organized online or on-campus job[1]fairs. For organizing on-line job-fairs provision has been provided in the NCS portal. The MCCs/employment Exchanges create the job-fair event in NCS portal the employers/placement organizations post their vacancies. The eligible candidates are notified about the vacancies through SMS/email. Additional efforts are also being taken by the MCCs/Employment Exchanges to mobilize the employers/placement organizations and jobseekers to participate in the job-fairs. While conducting the on[1]campus job-fairs, the career centres also create the event in the NCS portal.

6. Interlinkages of NCS portal

The Directorate General of Employment, Ministry of Labour & Employment provides the fund to support the State/UT Governments for providing basic IT infrastructure, minor re-furbishing of the 997 employment exchanges and for organizing job fairs at the district level to enhance the placement of the jobseekers.

For States having ICT based integrated systems for the employment exchanges, web services have been created for inter-linking state databases with the NCS Portal. NCS Portal has also been integrated with other Ministries/ departments like e-Shram MSDE, MHRD, AICTE, etc. Online integration with EPFO, ESIC and Shram Suvidha Portal have also been done to link the willing employers and enabling them to shortlist right candidates through a countrywide database of workforce on NCS portal.

NCS has constantly been evolving significantly to enhance its reach through introduction of new services and features from time to time. Some of these features include integrations with DigiLocker to enable candidates to upload their documents/certificates and make them available to the employers to accelerate the hiring process and integration with HireMee for creation of short video profiles by the jobseekers as video Curriculum Vitae (CV).

7. Young Professional Scheme

Ministry of Labour and Employment, under the Mission Mode Project is implementing the National Career Service (NCS) Project for revamping public employment related service. For the smooth transformation, as per the approved proposal of NCS project, Model Career Centres (MCCs) have been set up to provide standardized employment services across the nation. In order to make these MCCs effectively functional, a ‘Young Professional Scheme’ was launched by Directorate General for Employment (DGE) wherein one YP has been deployed at each MCC, for a span of 3 years, to facilitate the activities of the NCS Project. The ‘Young Professional Scheme’ has been aimed to utilize the knowledge, energy and fresh way of thinking of these young social leaders to help in the better transformation of the emerging landscape of employment service and career counselling in India. YP scheme was launched in 2015 and so far, 199 YPs have been recruited in 6 batches.

The YPs are recruited on time-based contract, as the Young Professional has to be engaged for a fixed period not exceeding 5 years for providing high quality services on specific projects as per the requirement. However, their continuation in their respective position beyond the second and subsequent years, would be contingent on a satisfactory performance review based on clearly defined Key Performance indicators. At present the Young Professionals are paid a consolidated amount of Rs.50,000/- as monthly remuneration plus Rs.1,500/- as conveyance allowance. An annual increment of Rs.5000/- is also granted to the Young Professionals based on their performance review.