At present, candidates seeking for government jobs in various categories need to take up examinations conducted separately by respective agencies like Staff Selection Commission,Railway recruitment board, Institute of Banking Personnel and selection. But in future, it will not be so because of setting up of the National Recruitment Agency.
National Recruitment Agency:
NRA will be a historic transformative reform in recruitment processes. National recruitment agency(NRA) will be an independent organisation. It got recent approval from Union Cabinet. The purpose to constitute it is to conduct Common Eligibility Test (CET).
Initially, the exams in preliminary stage conducted by Staff Selection Commission(SSC), Railway Recruitment Board(RRB), Institute of Banking Personnel and Selection(IBPS) will be merged into one as CET by NRA. This merger will have many positives and it is a boon for student community who are seeking government jobs in India.
From ASPIRANTS point of view:
The Govt job aspirants will get many positives out of it which includes,
- Reducing the financial burden for candidates by reducing the application cost, as three exams will be merged into one.
- Every District will act as a centre of examination. This helps the candidates who are living in the remote corner of the country by easily accessing exam centres.
- Duration of recruitment cycle will come down.
- Ease of selection leads to ease of job placements leading to ease of living.
- As the exam results will be valid for 3 years, it will further reduce the burden of students.
However, as of now, the CET will be for the first stage of the exam alone. The students who clear this stage needs to appear in the second and third stages which will be specialised recruitment processes done by respective government agencies like SSC, RRB, IBPS. In future, this second and third stage processes can also be merged into one depending on the possibility. This will further reduce the burden of aspirants and would lay a smooth recruitment process overall.
Now let us look broadly about the need for NRA in the first place.
From Recruiters point of view:
- The current recruitment phase is where duplication of efforts by SSC, RRB, IBPS happens, Hence we need to set up an agency which can de-duplicate the entire process or at least the first stage initially.
- The cost of conducting exams by various agencies need to be minimised. NRA will help in such efforts.
- The Common Eligibility Test(CET) going to be conducted by NRA will be beneficial in many ways. The state government recruiters can very well use the CET score for their stage one of the screening processes . Also, the CET score can be accessed by various recruiting bodies.
However, the state government need to scale up the infrastructure facilities for making Information and Communications technology(ICT) based CET possible. This includes bridging the digital divide, facilitating infrastructure to support the proposed online mode of CET.
Way forward:
Being an initiative which is a pro–youth and pro–recruiters, this initiative will reach heights. Ease of taking examination with such a simple and straightforward level of screening will be the ultimate game–changer. CET will be accessible through 12 Indian languages which imply, it is a user–friendly mode of examination. Both from Recruiters and aspirants perspective, National Recruitment Agency and CET will begin with lots of positives.
