NATIONAL CAREER SERVICE (NCS) 2.0
Reimagining India's national
employment platform
from the ground up
End-to-end redesign and development of NCS, the government platform connecting India's jobseekers and employers across formal and informal sectors.
MY ROLE
Product Owner
responsibilities
Research, Design, Product ownership
TIMELINE
Nov 2024 - Ongoing
CLIENT
Ministry of Labour & Employment
how this started
A concept proposal I sent cold. Months later, it became a full project.
This one didn't begin with a brief. I put together a concept proposal covering a few key modules of the NCS jobseeker app and sent it to the Ministry of Labour and Employment as an outreach. No one asked for it. I just thought the platform needed it.
Six or seven months passed with no response. Then a follow-up came, and what started as a few concept screens eventually turned into a full end-to-end design and development engagement. I moved from being the person who sent the proposal to being the product owner across the entire thing: conducting research, owning the design from first principles, and coordinating the development pipeline.
The core modules are now live. The platform is still actively evolving.
the problem
A national platform that felt like it hadn't moved since 2012.
NCS was functional in the way a lot of legacy government platforms are functional: it existed, it had features, and if you were determined enough you could eventually do what you came to do. But the experience was genuinely discouraging.
1. The mobile app was a dressed-up desktop site
The NCS app was essentially the desktop website wrapped in a mobile shell with no adaptation for how people actually use phones. For a platform meant to serve millions of jobseekers, many of whom use their phone as their primary or only device, this was a fundamental failure.
2.1
Existing NCS mobile app
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2. Key features were buried or broken
Job fairs, career counselling, application tracking: these existed on paper but were so hard to find and use that most users either didn't know about them or gave up. The information architecture seemed to have grown organically over years without anyone ever stepping back to look at the whole thing.
3. The platform wasn't designed for its actual users
NCS isn't a platform for white-collar professionals switching jobs. It serves a much broader demographic: first-time jobseekers, informal sector workers, people with limited digital literacy, people applying for government roles from rural areas. The existing design made no concessions for any of this. It assumed a level of comfort with digital tools that most of its users didn't have.
2.2
Old NCS website and mobile app
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research & insights
Talking to the right people with what I had access to.
Jobseeker insights: friends, family, and colleagues
The people I could realistically interview for the jobseeker side were people around me: friends, family, and colleagues including some blue-collar staff in the organisation. Not a representative sample, but a real one. They gave me honest reactions to the existing NCS experience and clear signals about what they expected from a job platform based on what they had used before. The gap between NCS and what they considered normal was consistent and obvious across every conversation.
Employer insights: through my organization & ministry references
Getting to the employer side required a different route. Through references from people at the ministry, I got visibility into how job aggregators post on the platform and how modules like career counselling and employment centres actually operate day to day. I was also able to get valuable insights from the recruiters working in my own organization. These were not formal interviews but they gave me genuine operational context that shaped how I approached the employer flows.
Competitive benchmarking and UX audit
I audited the existing NCS portal systematically and benchmarked it against both Indian job platforms and international public employment services to understand what good looked like at scale. The audit confirmed most of what the interviews had surfaced, and the benchmarking gave me a clear picture of the baseline users were comparing NCS against.
3.2
Similar platforms benchmarked
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A government platform doesn't get to have a lower bar than a private one. Not when the stakes are someone's livelihood.
design process
A few decisions that shaped everything else.
A product this large involves hundreds of decisions. These are the ones that mattered most.
1. DigiLocker as the foundation for trust
One of the core problems with NCS was credibility: bot accounts, unverified qualifications, employers who couldn't trust what they were reading on a profile. I made DigiLocker integration central rather than optional.
4.1.1
Registration using DigiLocker
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4.1.2
Documents fetched via DigiLocker
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Logging in via DigiLocker means every account is tied to a verified identity from the start. It kills spam accounts and bots at the source. Beyond login, DigiLocker lets jobseekers pull their education certificates directly into their profile, meaning the qualifications shown are backed by real documents. For a government employment platform, that verified layer is genuinely differentiating from private alternatives.
2. Designing for low digital literacy without dumbing it down
The hardest design problem on this project was inclusivity. The platform needed to work for someone applying for their first job from a small town on a basic Android phone, and also for an experienced professional comparing multiple offers. Designing for the lowest common denominator usually produces something that frustrates everyone.
The answer was progressive complexity. Every core flow works in as few steps as possible with sensible defaults, minimal required fields, and clear plain-language labels. More advanced capabilities, like adding multiple CVs, setting visibility settings on profile sections, or writing a custom cover letter, exist and are discoverable, but are never in the way.
4.2.1
AI CV Builder - Via upload
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4.2.2
AI CV Builder - Manual Filling
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The AI-powered CV builder came directly from this thinking: a lot of NCS users have never written a CV before. Rather than leaving them with a blank form, the platform generates a complete, professional CV from their profile data using OpenAI, which they can then edit. That feature exists specifically because the user base includes people who genuinely need it.
4.2.3
AI-powered CV builder on desktop web
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3. Skill-based matching in both directions
Job search on the old NCS was a keyword search with basic filters. You typed something, got a list, scrolled through it. There was no intelligence to it and no connection between what a jobseeker had put in their profile and what they were being shown.
I introduced skill-based matching that works for both sides of the platform. Jobseekers see how their profile aligns with each job posting before they apply: which skills match, which are missing, how their experience compares to what's required.
4.3.1
Skill match indication for a jobseeker
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Employers get the reverse: when a job is posted, the system surfaces candidates whose skills and qualifications align with the role, ranked by match quality rather than just recency. The result is a platform where both sides spend less time filtering and more time on decisions that actually matter.
4.3.2
Jobseeker match % for employers
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4. Closing the quality-of-life gap with private platforms
A lot of users had tried NCS, found it lacking compared to Naukri or LinkedIn, and stopped using it. Not because the jobs weren't there, but because the experience around the jobs was so much worse. No bookmarking, no application status tracking, no employer invitations, no profile visibility controls, no multiple CV support.
I treated this systematically: I mapped every feature users mentioned when describing what they expected from a job platform and built a checklist of what NCS was missing.
4.4.1
Quality-of-life features for jobseekers
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There were some features like employer invitations (where an employer can proactively reach out to a candidate, who then appears as shortlisted if they accept) required more thought about how they fit into the broader employer/jobseeker interaction model. The goal was that a user who had come from, say, Naukri should not feel like they had stepped backwards.
4.4.2
Invite jobseekers to apply on a job post - Employer
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final designs
Two personas, one connected platform.
The complete redesign covers 10+ major modules across the jobseeker and employer journeys. Here are the core ones.
1. Jobseeker: onboarding and profile
Registration via DigiLocker or mobile OTP, with document auto-fetch cutting profile setup time significantly. The profile covers skills, qualifications, work history, job preferences, and career timeline in one organised view. Multiple CVs supported, each shareable separately. Profile visibility settings let jobseekers control what different audiences can see. NCS-TrueProfile integration adds a verified identity layer that private platforms cannot offer.
5.1.1
Some of the job preferences for a jobseeker
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Jobseeker's profile was improved considerably to introduce many familiar features like sharing their profile, adding a profile picture, job preferences, etc. To better understand the comparison with how the profile looked before, the slider below shows the desktop web version.
5.1.2
Jobseeker profile before & after (desktop web)
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5.1.3
Reimagined Jobseeker profile (app)
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5.1.4
Jobseeker Profile - Full view
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Career timeline is introduced to let jobseekers tell the story of how their career has panned out so far. For the current version, education and professional experiences are allowed to be entered but it is envisioned that milestones and achievements like competitions, hackathons, certifications could also be a part of this to better align with blue-collared jobseekers.
5.1.5
Career Timeline
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5.1.6
Career timeline - Edit flow
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2. Jobseeker: finding and applying for jobs
A personalised home surface based on profile and preferences, with government job listings visually distinguished by the official Govt. of India emblem. Jobseekers can search jobs by industry, job type, experience level, etc. Quick filters are also given to browse jobs that match fix criteria like full-time, part-time, freelance, govt. jobs, etc.
5.2.1
Reimagined jobseeker's app
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Improved search with relevant filters and keyword plus location inputs. Job bookmarking and alert setting for saved searches. We introduced "near me" feature to instantly let jobseekers search for opportunities near them, especially useful for blue-collar jobs when distance is more important than job profile.
5.2.2
Revamped job search experience for jobseekers
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5.2.3
Job search experience on desktop (web)
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Each job listing shows a skills match score which is put together based on the skills and required education mentioned in the job post, so that jobseeker can make an informed decision whether they want to apply or not. The application flow becomes much smoother than earlier with an easy 2 step process - confirm contact details, upload or choose an existing CV and add an optional cover letter if one wishes to.
5.2.4
Easy Job application process
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Unlike before, jobseekers could now stay aware of the current status of their job application at all times. This is something jobseekers from both ends of the spectrum, formal & informal sector want.
5.2.5
Job application status tracking
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3. Employer: posting jobs and finding candidates
A guided job posting flow replacing the old single long form. Drafts and templates supported so frequent hirers don't start from scratch each time. AI assistance for writing and improving job descriptions.
5.3.1
Guided job post flow for new employers
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Candidate discovery surfaces profiles ranked by skill match rather than a flat list. Comprehensive filters are at an employer's disposal to filter out valid candidates: Industry, experience, functional role, functional area, min. education level, to name a few.
5.3.2
Jobseeker search and eligibility
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Just like the jobseeker, employers can keep track of their job postings via a dedicated job posting management module, with more intuitive options available for change status of any job posting easily.
5.3.3
Job posting management
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Employers have dedicated section in their portal to manage candidates inside each of their job posting, easily changing the status across to keep everything organized.
5.3.4
Candidate management
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4. CV builder
Available to every jobseeker, it generates a complete professional CV from profile data using AI, which the user can then edit section by section. Supports both automatic generation and fully manual entry for users who prefer control. Designed specifically for users who have never written a CV before, which is a significant portion of NCS's user base. As part of the MVP, focus was on including only the core features.
4.4.1
Quality-of-life features for jobseekers
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constraints & trade-offs
Not-so-small bumps along the way.
Designing for a demographic I am not part of
The user interviews helped, but I am not the target user for NCS. I have never looked for a job on a government portal, navigated a form in a language that is not my first, or applied for a role without a stable internet connection. Bridging that gap required constant pressure-testing of assumptions. Every time I thought a flow was simple enough, I had to ask: simple for whom?
Owning design and development simultaneously
Being product owner across both sides meant I was making decisions that affected the build directly, not just handing off to someone else to figure out. That is a different kind of responsibility. Scoping what goes into phase one versus phase two was as much a design decision as any visual or interaction choice. Several modules I designed are in Figma but not yet in development, held back by delivery scope rather than design readiness.
Working within government and policy constraints
NCS is a government platform operating under MoLE. Certain decisions were non-negotiable: specific integrations were mandated, certain workflows had to match existing policy processes, and anything touching user data had to clear a different bar than a private product would. Learning to distinguish between constraints I could design around and constraints I had to accept was an ongoing exercise throughout the project.
outcomes
Live, used, and still going.
At the time of writing, core features we revamped are live. The platform is continuing to evolve, with additional modules currently in design and scoped for the next development phase. I am not going to cite platform-level growth statistics here as the redesign is recent (at the time of writing) and isolating design impact from other variables would be misleading. What I can say is that a platform with a known reputation for being difficult to use now has a significantly different experience across every core flow, and that real users are moving through it.
REFLECTION
This project helped me grow as a designer.
Product Ownership
I came into this as a designer and ended up as a product owner. Those are not the same job. As a designer, my job is to understand the problem and create the best solution I can. As a product owner, my job is to make sure the right things get built in the right order by a team of people who are not in my head.
This project started because I made something nobody asked for.
The thing I keep coming back to is how this started. I put together a concept proposal on my own initiative and sent it cold to a government ministry. There was no brief, no client, no guarantee anything would come of it. Six or seven months later a follow-up arrived, and it eventually became a live product used by real people across the country.
I do not think that was luck. I think it was what happens when you care enough about a problem to do something about it before anyone gives you permission.