With a view to create a pool of highly employable and well trained manpower for the IT/Knowledge industry in the State, the Government has embarked upon a number of initiatives:

NASSCOM Assessment of Competency (NAC) :

The State has undertaken this initiative to help in building a pool of manpower, which is industry certified and employable. The certificate test would also improve the visibility of Govt Colleges at national level, as the result is forwarded by NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) to endorsing companies.
Punjab Infotech will be facilitating in the implementation of the NAC program in the State where infrastructure is made available by Department of Higher Education (DoHE), Govt. of Punjab. The NAC test will be conducted in association with NASSCOM.
1304 student appeared for NAC-Test Phase II in the month of September 2011 . Sensitization meeting was held at Hotel Shivalik View on August 4, 2011 with college principal and Co-ordinator from 14 test centres , NASSCOM representative,Manager Education Initiative from New Delhi gave a detailed presentation to the stakeholders.
NAC Test Phase III will be scheduled in the month of January 2012 targeting 2000 students.

A. Job Aspirants

• Common, transparent process across companies in the BPO sector
• Ability to identify his/her own strengths and weakness
• Opportunity to get certified on a national level from NASSCOM

• Creates a concept of 'education' to 'employability'
• Identification of 'skill gaps' in youth to be filled at academia level
• Provides long term viable solution to the problem of unemployment by creating jobs for large no. of educated youth

• National standard for recruitment of entry-level talent
• Ease of benchmarking for individuals against the industry standards
• Ability to reach out to a larger pool of potential candidates
• Projected 50% cost savings in industry's recruitment process and training costs

• The programe would help in upgrading the skills as per industry requirements thereby increasing employability of the students
• The programe would help in overall personality development of the students

• The programe would help in creating a concept of 'education' to 'employability'
• The programe would fetch a great degree of socio-economic benefit to the State by creating a pool of students that have the soft skills sets as desired by the industry

• As the communication and soft skills are the requirements in all major firms across verticals, industry would get employable human resource
• Specifically BPO/KPO firms would save on their cost of training candidates on soft skills as it forms a prerequisite for these firms

• Three training partners Hero Mindmine, IndiaCan and IL&FS were chosen after a stringent techno-commercial evaluation process. The project is being implemented in 23 colleges targeting 1840 students.

Project Genesis (Infosys BPO)

The project is being implemented in 5 colleges targeting 200 students. Edu Centers have been established in these colleges to make the For Implementing the Project Genesis a MoU was signed between Department of Higher Education & Infosys BPO on September 27, 2010 which was duly facilitated by Punjab Infotech. Project Genesis, is a community initiative of Infosys BPO, which is aimed at aligning the teaching and course curriculum at Graduate Schools to the industry requirements so the students have an edge as far as employability is concerned. The education for these graduate students is more than theoretical knowledge and makes them industry-ready by the time they graduate. Subsequent to which two week residential Train the Trainer Program was conducted in the Infosys Campus Chandigarh from August 22, 2011 to August 30,2011 in which 44 Faculty members from 25 Govt & Affiliated Colleges were trained by the Infosys Mysore Campus trainer. The training was concluded with a Principal's Conclave on August 29,2011 in which Honorable Secretary Higher Education, Punjab, Dr Roshan Sunkaria was the Chief Guest. training more effective and interactive.