Here’s why LinkedIn is training blue collar workers in India

In the era of increasing automation, the demand for skilled workers remains at an all time high across sectors in the country.

LinkedIn has announced its partnership with IL&FS Skills Development Corporation Limited to help up skill blue-collar workers and job seekers in the sector.

IL&FS Skills is India’s leading vocational and employability training company whose aim is to train four million people by 2022 in manufacturing, agriculture, services, engineering and construction sectors. The company currently has a placements network of 1000+ employers and provides Sector Skills Councils (SSC) certification.The Indian government has a target to train over 400 million people in India in different skills by 2022.

With LinkedIn, IL&FS has devised a digital vocational training program that provides a vocational skilling ecosystem which includes the LinkedIn platform and helps bring the offline blue-collar workers online enabling them to access opportunities and training courses simultaneously. Skill with LinkedIn India

This partnership is an initiative by LinkedIn to support the Indian government’s ‘Skill India’ mission and also expand its growing Indian member-base. India is the second biggest market for LinkedIn after the U.S.

In India, some states have labour shortages and others have labour surplus which makes job placements challenging.

Allen Blue, Co-founder, LinkedIn told Business Insider, “Employers on the LinkedIn platform hire across management levels and while LinkedIn is known for discovering great white-collar jobs, there is a need for high skilled blue collar workers. This is also an opportunity for us to work with employers who are hiring across the skills spectrum. ”

Akshay Kothari, Country Manager and Head of Product, LinkedIn India said that this was an attempt to expand the LinkedIn Placements platform and as they expand across the employment sector, they will incorporate local languages starting with Hindi.
The course of time

Under this partnership, IL&FS will design and provide the skilling modules and training while LinkedIn will help the students cover the last mile from up-skilling to getting a job using the platform.

LinkedIn has designed a separate interface for the students where they are able to create a profile, access learning content, build their network by connecting with classmates, seniors and instructors and get a job and the instruction is in a Hindi voice-over.

The program starts this month at IL&FS Skills Development Centres across India with the initial batch of 400 job-seekers looking for careers in hospitality.

A single batch will undergo 45 days of training and LinkedIn aims to expand it to ten batches in 120 days.