Subhasis Das? parents were convinced their 23-year-old son had found a good job when they saw the vacuum cleaner. Das, a frontline salesperson with Eureka Forbes, had received the hoover as part of a demo kit, he recalls. He was placed with the company through rural jobs portal Chaakri.co.in.

A brainchild of Srei Sahaj e-Village head Sabahat Azim, the portal was conceived of as part of the business-to-customer (B2C) portfolio at Sahaj common service centres (CSCs). Chaakri serves the dual purpose of a rural jobs portal for seeking mainly blue-collar employment and a source of income for the village-level entrepreneurs, or VLEs as they are called, running Sahaj CSCs. These centres are Internet kiosks set up under the National e-Governance Plan 2006 to enhance the reach of Web-based services to rural and even remote areas. While the backbone of the scheme was to be government-to-customer services such as issuance of certificates of caste, income, domicile, birth and death, etc, the B2C services also were envisaged as part of the original plan to help VLEs supplement their earnings. These B2C services typically include railway reservations, digital photography, photocopying and even selling insurance policies.

Srei Sahaj, a subsidiary of Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd, is one of 18 service centre agencies (SCAs) nationwide, and currently has a mandate to open 28,000 kiosks across six states. There are currently 76,669 CSCs operational in the country. SCAs are non-governmental or private sector partners that have won bids to open Internet kiosks at the state level.

Sujoy Ghosh, chief of business operations, Chaakri, says Sahaj has over the past six months organised 18 job fairs in the states where it operates, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, and already 1,200 placements have been done through the portal. The database currently has at least 70,000 resumes, he adds. Ghosh says security personnel and frontline salespersons jobs are the biggest employers from among this set, and they pay ?nothing below Rs 4,000?. ?We ensure the employer pays the minimum state wage,? he says, adding the company also is mulling giving insurance at a minimum premium to applicants as an incentive.

The idea, explains Ashutosh Shrivastava, chief marketing officer and head of Uttar Pradesh operations for Srei Sahaj, is to employ rural youth in organised sector jobs where they would earlier have had access mainly to work in the unorganised sector. Says Shrivastava: ?Wherever we place them, they contribute towards a provident fund, gratuity. Earlier they would go and work as contract labour. We are now placing them in good companies. That itself is a huge market for us.? Eureka Forbes? Das contributes to employees? provident fund each month and says his company also offers him and his family medical and other benefits. Vulnerable employment, including in the unorganised sector and own-account work, have been identified as being closely linked to the prevalence of poverty in publications and research such as the 2010 Millennium Development Goals Report.

And while VLEs stand to make up to Rs 30 through the process of filling in a standard format resume and posting it on the website, the gains for jobseekers and companies could run much higher. Take the example of Sonali Pal. When Pal?s VLE Partha Pal at Krishnanagar, Nadia district, West Bengal, asked her to post her resume on the website and meet Sahaj executives at the centre for screening, she could barely have imagined that just two days later she would be patched through for an interview to the people at Peerless General Finance and Investment Co Ltd. The 23-year-old has been employed with the company for two months now, and makes Rs 10,000 a month. Pal says, ?With this job, I started my professional career, which has boosted my confidence level and also made me financially independent.?

Peerless General is one of 77 companies Sahaj has tied up with for placements through Chaakri. Others include Eureka Forbes, ICICI Pru, Tops Security, Aamara Raja, Usha Martin and India Infoline. Shrivastava explains that while initially it was a challenge to convince companies to give these youth a chance, the problem is quite reversed now, with not enough people to fill the number of openings announced every day on the website. ?We are having to create a separate vertical and employ manpower at the district level to find suitable people to fill these posts. These people go through the candidates? forms and screen them as per the requirements of the job,? he says.

Now companies are even pitching in to train and then absorb candidates through Sahaj. Ghosh cites the example of Group 4 Security. The security firm is training aspirants to be absorbed as security personnel at the company’s skill development centres called Sahaj Academy in at least four rural locations in West Bengal.

Ghosh, who leads a team of seven at Chaakri, elaborates that skill development can be a challenge as the pool the company is working with comprises mainly unskilled or semi-skilled workers. And when training 30-50 people at each centre in different, sometimes specialised programmes over a 18-30-day period, they can use all the help they can get. The academy currently has 50 skill development centres and plans to scale that up to 100 centres by December-end.

Matching the right job to the right skill set can also be a challenge. So the team has drawn up a set of qualifying parameters. At least 5 ft 6-7 inches tall, with 20/20 vision and weighing more than 58kg?those are the specifications Ghosh is looking for in a security guard, for example. ?You don’t need an advanced degree of education for a job as a security guard.? Ghosh explains there is a mix of below poverty line (BPL) and above poverty line candidates in the database. These applicants could have educational qualifications ranging anywhere from class VIII or X pass to graduates.

That there is ready demand for the service can be gauged from the impatience of VLEs in places where the service is yet to be launched. Says Manvendra Singh Chauhan whose family runs a CSC in Saspan village, Lucknow district, ?I keep getting updates on how there are some 75,000 openings. I have whispered about the service in people’s ears here, and there are already 100-200 people who are interested. But I will only launch the service from my centre once the company finalises a date for a job fair in this area.? Despite the ready demand, both for jobs among rural youth and skilled personnel from industry, there are hurdles in Ghosh’s and Chaakri’s path.

It is not atypical for Ghosh to come in to work to find that a security guard placed through Chaakri wants to quit, or a plumber has played truant again, or a salesperson needs to be convinced of the merits of keeping his job?within months of joining. Ghosh says workers’ reluctance to relocate?even to another district within the same state?and attrition remain the two main challenges of his job. In terms of relocation, Ghosh finds the level of resistance varies from state to state. So while workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where traditionally people have been forced to migrate to bigger cities for work, are more willing to shift base, those from say Assam and West Bengal are reluctant to relocate even to another district within their states.

?Also, working fixed hours is a lifestyle change for most,? says Ghosh. ?The moment they miss their afternoon siesta, they’re tempted to quit.?

Take for example SK Sah Alam. He is a BPL candidate placed as a security guard with Red Guards Group through Chaakri. Working for Rs 4,000 a month, Alam’s main grouse is ?hectic, long working hours?. The 27-year-old has been in his current employment only a month and is already looking to change jobs.

Ghosh, however, is far from flummoxed by this quandary. ?We have started involving local authorities such as the district magistrate and families to ensure the worker stays back,? he says. ?They’re partly responsible for him not leaving. There is an expense attached to training him, manpower invested in matching his skills to the right job and in finding him that job.?