 "Nasscom logo")
With an aim to connect future-ready digital talent with the industry, National Association of Software Services Companies (Nasscom) today launched the Talent Connect portal. This portal will bridge the gap between recruiters and digitally skilled and certified candidates.
The portal, which has been in work for the last one-and-a-half year already has 100,000 candidates and has seen corporates such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Tech Mahindra and Salesforce recruiting from it.
The platform, for the first time, is also making an attempt to bridge the gap of skill-based talent to employers, rather than the current practice of academic focused talent base.
“The main motivation for the creation of the portal was the skill shortage we are seeing. We also see that the lifespan of a skill is getting shorter and companies are also saying that they need access to a better talent pool. Because skill sets are shifting fast they are also finding it difficult to keep on training employees,” said Kirti Seth, CEO, sector skill council (SSC) Nasscom.
Seth also added that the focus on skill will address the long pending argument that the Indian education system does not focus on employability but only on theoretical knowledge, which brings down the employability of candidates. “Skilling is about being able to do something really well. In fact, this has been one of the biggest complaints of the education system that people come out with theoretical knowledge and know really less,” she added.
The portal focuses on two segments of skilling—core IT skills and emerging tech skills. Core IT skills cater to work profiles such as customer care executives, help desk roles, data entry etc. The emerging tech skills focus on the latest full stack tech capabilities, programming skills like Java, Python etc, data scientists and cyber security expertise.
Almost 80 per cent of the learner base on the portal is coming from tier 2 & 3 cities. The portal also makes use of AI to match the skills of the candidate to the jobs that are available. “We are doing a lot more to capture demand from companies to actually post active jobs on the portal. Earlier we would upload individual details, but now this can be done by individuals on their own,” added Seth.
“There are enough and more job portals in the market, we are different as we have the entire journey mapped out. It’s not just about having a resume and it being put up on a portal, but there is a demand and that is linked to a certain skill that is required, which is visible to the learner. Who can then train and consume that skill and hence become more employable,” said Navanit Samaiyar, head, FutureSkills.
The portal works in tandem with Nasscom’s training ecosystem which includes the government skilling schemes, the Future Skill Portal which is also part of the Talent Connect brings with it an ecosystem of 200 partners, as well as contributions from tech players like Salesforce, Google etc.
When asked what is the relevance of the job profile under the Core IT segment, especially the way AI and generative AI are taking over these roles? “As of today we are not seeing that shift happening. India is a vast country and a very small number of companies are talking of this shift. The fact is that these may go away in a few years. As a council we are creating programmes on digital literacy and digital fluency…how can we give more skills that are more in sync with new age demands. For instance, data jobs are going to be massive going ahead,” added Seth.
Rather companies in the ITeS segment and banking sector continue to have such demands for such skills, including the government segment. “On government schemes, our placement ratio is 56 per cent from the core IT skills segment,” added Jyotsna Minocha, lead-Career support, SSC Nasscom.
• “By building a wide-reaching ecosystem on our platform, our goal is to help accelerate the creation of a standard and interoperable credentialing framework that will alleviate the challenges faced in the skills verification process—and, ultimately, contribute to the creation a dynamic and vibrant talent market,” said Subha Tatavarti, Chief Technology Officer, Wipro.
• To accelerate the adoption of this ecosystem, Wipro has formed an industry working group, that includes learners, employers, academia, training providers, assessment agencies, and recruiters. So far, nearly 70 organizations have joined the DICE ID platform to become part of this initiative.
