Dual Democratization of Jobs and Talent

Four years back, a 4th year Computer Science Engineering student, Shaunak from Aizwal, Mizoram, travelled almost 1500 miles to find himself a job. He was a topper at his college and still had to struggle to get an opportunity. In a similar case, Vijeta, a bright Finance graduate from Moradabad, struggled to find her way to top companies. Just like Shaunak and Vijeta, there are millions of young jobseekers in India, who are talented, educated, yet struggle to find a suitable opportunity that can do justice to their capabilities.

In 2018, TCS reimagined hiring for engineering graduates through the TCS National Qualifier Test conducted on the TCS iON platform. This resulted in a PAN India test that truly democratized fresher recruitment at TCS and what followed were some heart-touching stories of students from remote locations of India gaining access to career opportunities at TCS.

There are millions of students from different streams who dream of making it big in their life. But, what seems to be standing in between is the lack of access to the right career opportunity. In the traditional hiring scenario, hundreds of corporates and small businesses across the country spend countless hours and management bandwidth scouting top campuses for talent. A Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report by Society of Human Resource Management claims that the average time to fill a position is 36 days. In addition to the time taken, this also leaves a huge pool of talent across the Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities untapped.

Today, the struggle for bridging the talent to jobs is even more aggravated as the world has come to a standstill, confronted by public health and economic crisis, compelling us to take action as an ecosystem. It is time for corporates across India to adopt an enhanced manifesto for recruitment. It's a feeling of contentment to announce that TCS iON has opened its National Qualifier Test to all corporates and to students of all streams, to democratize the talent search and put a spotlight on millions of top talent in nook and corner of our country. This is a two-way democratization - access to top talent for corporates and access to jobs for talented job seekers.

The talent pool has grown by 800,000 in 2018-19 taking the absolute number of students to 37.4 million. The all-new National Qualifier Test will play match-maker for a strategic industry-academia-individual partnership to bridge the gap between employers and fresh talent out of colleges. The unique, standardized and location-agnostic test will provide the corporate world seamless access to India’s job-seeking student population in higher education. It will also save management time and effort in evaluating the fresh talent that will enable quicker deployment of human resources.

The test will focus on general abilities covering verbal, numerical and reasoning abilities to arrive at the normalized NQT Score that can be presented by students to corporates as a demonstration of their cognitive abilities. In future, NQT will additionally measure the attitudinal alignments, Industry readiness as Industry NQT and abilities in specific subjects as Subject NQT.

TCS iON’s platform technology has played a pivotal role in enabling this transformation. The platform provides access to deep student insights and a superior experience to the students. The students can now take the high stake NQT from the comfort of their homes. To ensure inclusion, candidates who do not have access to the necessary infrastructure at home can take the test from the nearest TCS iON centre.

One test will act as a gateway to multiple job opportunities across leading organizations in IT, BFSI, manufacturing, pharma, and FMCG sectors, including TCS. 

NQT will be a game-changer for the Indian corporate world making the recruitment process more agile, efficient and all-inclusive. This will empower students with accessible job opportunities. I invite all the stakeholders of this ecosystem to come together and join us in celebrating this two-way Democratization.