How recruitment agency will help both employers, job seekers

Overall cost for both will come down but financial health of entities will lead to fewer new recruitment

The Central government is putting in place the National Recruitment Agency (NRA), an overarching body for a preliminary screening, to facilitate recruitment by some of the biggest employers in the country.

At a time when job cuts and salary cuts have created uncertainty and economic distress in the private sector, railways, banks, and central police organisations will have this new system of recruitment, which is expected to reduce cost for employers and job seekers.

The existing recruitment bodies will be able to concentrate on enhancing the second level of assessment of the candidates after the initial screening.

“Setting up the National Recruitment Agency means reduction in travel and logistics cost. Candidates will not have to write multiple examinations. This will be the first stage exam. Earlier, for this stage, the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) used to have a huge number of applications. This screening will ensure that the number of people appearing is fewer, based on a cut-off (score assigned) in the NRA test,” said V K Yadav, chairman, Railway Board.

Similarly, the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS), which does initial screening for bank recruitment, would have to handle fewer initial applications. B Harideesh Kumar, director, IBPS, said: “We can concentrate on the main selection process. This will enhance the quality of screening work.”

For organisations that finally give the jobs, nothing much changes in terms of process. Another upside is the broadbasing of access to candidates as 1,000 centres, covering all districts in the country, will conduct NRA tests.

Rajkiran Rai, managing director and chief executive, Union Bank of India, said the rural population would come into the mainstream.

“This, over a period of time, will bring balance. At present, the talent supply is skewed (more urban-centric).”

The Indian Railways recruits through the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBS), and Railway Recruitment Cells (RRCS). The number of candidates empanelled for various posts on Indian Railways during the past three years was 84,534. In the current year, it is expected to be 18,268. Prior to that, 62,773 candidates were empanelled from 2014-15 to 2016-17.

The RRBS, through two centralised employment notifications (CENS), finalised 127,573 combined vacancies of various Group ‘C’ services. Another five CENS, covering 156,138 vacancies of various Group ‘C’ jobs, including Level-1 posts (mainly in safety categories), were notified in 2018-19.

Besides the RRBS and IBPS, the NRA will also assign scores to candidates who are recruited through the Service Selection Commission (SSC), which functions under the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) and is mainly engaged in conducting competitive exams for recruitment to junior posts in government like stenographer, technician, and constable for some central forces. Candidates for these need not be graduates.

Being a fledgling institution, the NRA would get support from all three — the SSC, RRBS, and IBPS. It will conduct a common eligibility test (CET) to screen candidates for Group B and C (non-technical) posts. All the three organisations have experience and good databases, which the NRA could tap, pointed out a public sector banker.

Candidates seeking government jobs have to appear in different examinations conducted by multiple recruiting agencies, for which similar eligibility conditions are prescribed. They have to pay fees to multiple recruiting agencies and also have to travel long distances for appearing in exams. According to the Press Information Bureau, 25-30 million candidates appear in each of these examinations.

Though the overall cost for both candidates and employers would come down, the financial health of some of these organisations leads to cutting down on new recruitments. There are also issues like call letters not being issued even after the exam results are declared or the declaration of results getting delayed.

Staff expenses of the Indian Railways increased from ~56,817.48 crore in 2015-16 to ~92,993.07 crore in 2020-21. This cost has increased for other organisations too.

On January 23, Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal said the Indian Railways had decided to recruit at least 230,000 people in the next two years. In 2018, the Railway Recruitment Board conducted computerised tests to fill 127,278 vacancies. The NRA’S Common Eligibility Test will enable candidates to appear once and apply to any or all of these recruitment agencies for the higher level of examination. The CET score of the candidate will be valid for three years from the date of the declaration of the results.

While there is no restriction on the number of attempts, there is an upper age limit. Relaxation in age will be given to candidates belonging to scheduled castes/scheduled tribes/other backward classes and other categories under the current policy.