The Staff Selection Commission (SSC) intends to speed up the recruitment cycle in order to increase the human resource for the public sector, a top official said in Mumbai on Tuesday.

"The biggest challenge before the SSC is to speed up the recruitment cycle for candidates appearing for its examinations," SSC Chairman N K Raghupathy said.

"Therefore we plan to speed up the recruitment cycle so that more candidates can be absorbed for the Government jobs."

The SSC, entrusted with the responsibility of recruiting middle level employees in the Central Government, has drawn up a comprehensive plan to fast track recruitment process.

"There are 17,000 vacancies to be filled up in the middle levels of the Central Government. The recruitment process from the date of announcement to the filling up of vacancies is too long and it takes nearly one-and-a-half to two-years. We want to cut down the gap to six-12 months," he said.

To meet this challenge, the SSC has drawn up a new time frame for recruitment -- six months for single-tier examinations, nine months for recruitment through two-tier examinations and maximum of 12 months for 3-tier examinations, he added.

Addressing the inaugural session of 'Question Bank workshop on General English and Comprehension,' Raghupathy said, "We are restructuring the examination system with greater emphasis on objective type tests."