As LinkedIn looks to grow its 33 million strong second largest user base In India, the company is eyeing an integration with the National Skill Qualifications Framework (NSQF) which is looking at standardization in skills of India’s workforce.
“It’s very important that everybody speaks the same language. Like a Plumber Grade 1, what does that mean as opposed to a JavaScript engineer? There’s certainly that standardization taxonomy that needs to go in to assess each of those skills,” said Ganesan Venkatasubramanian, Head of Engineering at LinkedIn India.
The National Skill Qualification Framework, a framework setup by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship(MSDE), organizes all qualifications according to a series of levels — from one to ten — of knowledge, skills and aptitude. LinkedIn, which recently launched its first India-focused product that looks to digitize the process of campus placements, is evaluating an integration with NSQF that will aid recruiters to better assess candidates based on their skills.
With the growing focus on employ-ability of graduates in the country, there’s a need for a standard way to define skills, said Venkatasubramanian. The government claims that the NSQF is a quality assurance platform where a learner can acquire the certification for competency needed at any level through formal, non-formal or informal learning. When it comes to skill development in India, “right now the government is focusing on blue collar jobs because that’s where the mass is and that’s where they should start. But with things like NSQF, I don’t think it’s just blue collar jobs, it’s an overall framework that they’re coming up with,” he added.
While the NSQF is a broad spanning framework to help employers verify skills of candidates be it a plumber or MBA graduate, LinkedIn is still focusing squarely on white collar jobs. The social network is only available in English, which it claims is the language of business in India, and has no immediate plans to introduce local language support on its platform.
Students make up the fastest growing demographic for LinkedIn in India, which is pushing the company to roll out more student-focused products and features. Citing a study done by LinkedIn in the APAC region, Venkatasubramanian said finding jobs are getting harder. “More than a third of the students (surveyed) said it’ll take them between one and three months before they find that first job,” he added.
There’s a massive mismatch in the skills being acquired by youngsters in colleges and those that are required at the workplace. While there is active collaboration between the government and the industry to revamp curriculum, going forward through efforts such as NSQF will become more important. “The government has the ability to reach. It’s certainly possible to get feet on the street, but just to achieve scale I think technology can play a big part. Again, squarely the government is the one that has the right resources for that,” said Venkatasubramanian.
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