Nasscom portal to bridge job scout-seeker gap

The National Association of Software Services Companies (Nasscom) on Tuesday launched the Talent Connect portal to bridge the gap between recruiters and digitally skilled and certified candidates.

The portal, which has been in the work for the last 28 months has 100,000 candidates and companies 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 said 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 said.

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 and data entry.

The emerging tech skills focus on the latest full stack tech capabilities, programming skills like Java, Python, 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,” Seth explained.