As per a latest report, about 6,83, 823 posts in different central government departments as on March 1 last year were vacant. 

According to data given in a written reply by Minister of State for Personnel, Jitendra Singh, of the total vacant posts, a total of 5,74,289 are in Group C, 89,638 in Group B and 19,896 in Group A category, as on March 1, 2018. 

After assessing the report and identifying the vacancies reported by the user departments, the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) has started recruitment process to fill up 1,05,338 posts during the year 2019-2020. 

“Recruitment process to fill up 4,08,591 vacancies by the SSC, RRBs and department of posts, is in progress,” shared Singh in the note. 

In his note, Singh also highlights the efforts being made to drive the recruitment for vacant posts in central departments. Besides issuing centralized employment notifications and conducting examinations, many digital recruitment methods are also being adopted. Talent crunch is a challenge for not only private companies and corporates but the government of India is also struggling with it. And to drive recruitment for so many vacant posts, traditional hiring methods would not be enough. Realizing this the government has hence switched to digitized recruitment measures, although they are still at a nascent stage. 

For instance, back in 2017 Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) have conducted the world’s largest computer based test for about 92 lakh candidates. The online based tests led the tests could be completed in one day each, whereas in conventional mode these would have taken about 2 months time. But now it's time for them to move to the next phase on their digital transformation journey. The central government can explore various recruitment tools for screening and filtering candidates. They can also explore how they can leverage bots and other AI driven solutions. The government has already doubled the budget allocation to the Digital India initiative spearheaded by NITI Ayog. Now how this budget is utilized to digitize and improve the current recruitment processes is to look forward to.