How to find skilled and semi-skilled jobs in Nepal

In everyday Nepali hiring, 'skilled' means you can do a trade or profession to a standard someone will pay for without supervision: an electrician who can wire a house to code, a cook who can run a hotel kitchen, a welder, a heavy-vehicle driver, a nurse, an accountant, a developer. 'Semi-skilled' means you can do part of that work reliably and learn the rest on the job: a helper who has laid tiles for two years, a kitchen assistant, a shop floor supervisor, a data-entry operator, a security guard with training.

The formal version of this is the National Skill Testing Board's level system. The Board, which began as the Skill Testing Authority in 1983 and has sat under CTEVT since 1989, has written occupational skill standards for 237 occupations and issues a national skill certificate after a practical test. Elementary level needs 140 hours of vocational training. Level 1 needs literacy plus one year of work experience, or 160 hours of training, or six months of work after training. Level 2 needs three years of experience, or a year of training plus a year of work. Level 3 needs five years of experience or the equivalent. Level 4 is currently issued only for ophthalmic assistants.

Why this matters for the job hunt: employers, especially larger contractors, hotels, hospitals and manufacturers, are moving towards asking for the certificate, and some government and donor-funded programmes require it. It is also the document that turns 'I have done this for years' into something an HR officer can file. The section on getting certified below explains how to sit the test.

For office, technical and professional roles, three portals carry most of the advertised vacancies in Nepal, and all three are free for job seekers. Set up a complete profile on each, upload the same CV, and turn on email or app alerts for your category. Most vacancies close within one to two weeks, so alerts matter more than browsing.

merojob (merojob.com) is the oldest and largest of the modern portals, founded in 2009 by Shailendra Raj Giri. It reports more than 40,000 registered companies and over a million registered job seekers. Beyond listings it offers profile-based job recommendations, career blogs, survey reports and, on the employer side, recruitment, executive search, training and payroll services. Its listings skew towards banking, NGOs, IT, sales, education and administration, and it is where most established employers post first. Its sister platform Rojgari, covered below, handles skill-based work.

Kumari Job (kumarijob.com), run by Kumari Job Pvt. Ltd. since 2014, reports more than 10,000 active listings and describes itself as Nepal's first AI-powered resume search and applicant tracking system. It has Android and iOS apps, a CV builder, and runs paid training in digital marketing, SEO, accounting and HR. Its largest categories are sales and business development, IT, finance, marketing and hospitality, and it is particularly active for fresher and mid-level openings.

JobsNepal (jobsnepal.com) is the veteran, operating since around 2000 under JobsNepal Pvt. Ltd. Alongside full-time, contract and part-time vacancies it lists tender notices, expressions of interest and requests for quotation, which makes it useful for anyone in construction, supply or consultancy who wants to see where the work is being commissioned, not only who is hiring. Its NGO and INGO section remains one of the most complete in the country.

A practical note on all three: employers pay to post, job seekers do not. If any page, message or 'agent' claiming to represent a portal asks you for money to apply, to be shortlisted or to 'process' your file, it is a scam, and the portals themselves say so.

The big portals were built for CVs and cover letters, which is not how a driver, a tailor or a site supervisor gets hired. Rojgari (rojgari.com), run by Rojgari Services Pvt. Ltd. for more than seven years, was set up specifically as a domestic employment service for skilled and semi-skilled Nepalis. Its tagline, in Nepali, is 'find the work you are looking for; employment is now in the country', and that is the pitch: a home-market alternative to the manpower agency.

Registration is free for Nepali citizens aged 18 and over, through the website or the Rojgari mobile app, and works on a profile of skills and experience rather than a formal CV. Employers post vacancies and receive applications from matched candidates. It is worth a profile for anyone in trades, hospitality, driving, security, retail, care work or production, and it is the natural place to list an NSTB certificate once you have one.

SajiloHire (sajilohire.com), whose name means 'easy hire', takes a different approach from the portals above. Instead of relying only on employers posting to it, it aggregates vacancies from company career pages and direct employer postings across Nepal into a single searchable list, so a job that was only ever advertised on a bank's own website shows up next to one posted directly. At the time of writing it lists 721 active jobs across 268 companies in more than 30 sectors, including IT, fintech, banking, healthcare, manufacturing, construction, logistics, retail, education, media and hospitality.

Its second idea is open salary data. Under 'Know your worth' it collects anonymous, crowd-sourced salary reports by role and company and aims to publish them alongside listings, which is rare in Nepal, where advertised salaries are usually 'negotiable' and candidates go into interviews blind. The salary section is young and its coverage will grow as people contribute, but the intention is exactly what the market lacks. There is also a company directory, a tools section and an internships and entry-level section for graduates.

Job seekers browse and apply free; employers have a separate sign-up for posting. Disclosure: SajiloHire is built by a friend of Amarnepal's owner. It is included here because an aggregator with salary transparency is genuinely useful; judge it on the listings.

A lot of semi-skilled and part-time hiring in Nepal is local: a café in Pokhara needs weekend staff, a coaching centre in Butwal needs a part-time tutor, a family in Kathmandu needs a driver three days a week. GenZ Link, built by Anu Bhattarai and available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, is designed around that kind of hiring rather than the formal vacancy. Its tagline is 'Bringing Nepal to you'.

The app combines four things young people moving for work or study need at once: part-time and full-time jobs, full-lease and shared accommodation, buying and selling a business, and buying and selling used vehicles. Listings are direct, employer to worker and landlord to tenant, with no commission and no broker, which matters in a market where a room or a job often costs a month's rent in 'commission' to a middleman. Small local businesses, a salon, a tuition centre, a restaurant, can list themselves so they are discoverable, and can post shifts directly.

It launched in October 2025 and is a young platform, so coverage is deepest in Kathmandu Valley and thin elsewhere for now. Disclosure: GenZ Link is built by Amarnepal's owner. Use it alongside, not instead of, the portals above, and for the same rule as everywhere else: no one should ask you to pay to get a job through it.

The Right to Employment Act, 2075 (2018) guarantees every Nepali citizen the right to employment and sets a minimum of 100 days of work a year for registered unemployed people. To deliver this, every local level (municipality or rural municipality) has an Employment Service Centre, often called the Rojgar Sewa Kendra, whose job is to keep the register of unemployed people, survey the local labour market, match job seekers to employers and coordinate temporary public works. Registration is done at your ward office or at the local level's employment service centre, usually in the first months of the fiscal year, and applies to citizens between 18 and 59; the flagship public-works scheme has been targeted at those aged 18 to 45.

In practice the centres have mostly run community public-works schemes, paying registered unemployed people for road, drainage and irrigation work, rather than the job-matching the Act imagined. That is changing. The government declared 2025 to 2035 the Internal Employment Promotion Decade, replaced the Prime Minister Employment Programme with the National Employment Promotion Programme, and signed a memorandum with ten private-sector umbrella bodies to create jobs and train young people, while the International Labour Organization is running a project to strengthen the centres' matching and counselling services.

For a skilled or semi-skilled worker the centre is worth an afternoon for three reasons: it is the entry point to the 100-day guarantee if nothing else comes through, it is where local governments increasingly post their own contract and daily-wage vacancies, and the register is what training and skill-testing programmes draw from when they offer subsidised places. Take your citizenship certificate, a passport photo and any training or skill certificates you have.

The National Skill Testing Board runs practical tests against published occupational standards and issues a national skill certificate and skill identity card. It has tested more than 108,000 craftspeople and certified 72,730. The test is practical: an electrician wires, a cook cooks, a mason builds, and an assessor scores the work against the standard for that level.

To apply you need a Nepali citizenship certificate, passport photos, and proof of eligibility for the level you are sitting: either a training certificate issued at least a year earlier by a CTEVT-affiliated institution or a government body, or an experience letter stating the duration of work, issued by a government, semi-government or registered private organisation with a PAN or VAT number. Applications open in rounds announced on ctevt.org.np and in the newspapers, and tests are held at designated skill testing centres in each province. Successful candidates pay Rs 150 for the certificate and identity card.

Choose your level honestly. Level 1 is the right entry for most people with a year or two of hands-on work; Level 2 for someone who could train others. Employers, and the manpower and foreign-employment system if you ever go that way, recognise the certificate across the levels.

Beyond the portals, most semi-skilled hiring in Nepal happens in four places. First, Facebook groups: nearly every city and every trade has one ('Kathmandu job vacancy', 'Pokhara hotel jobs', driver and rider groups), and employers post there because it is free and fast. Treat them as leads, not offers: verify the employer's name, address and registration before you visit, and never send money or documents to a stranger. Second, notice boards and shop windows, still the standard for retail, restaurants and workshops. Third, the trade network: hardware shops know which contractors are hiring, garage owners know which fleets need drivers, and a cook who is leaving usually knows who is replacing them. Fourth, the local government notice board and the employment service centre, for municipal contract and daily-wage work.

The apps are steadily absorbing the first two of those. GenZ Link and Rojgari both exist because Facebook groups are chaotic and notice boards do not travel. But the underlying habit is the same: be visible where the hiring happens, and answer fast.

Set aside two hours a week and do the same things every time. Check alerts from merojob, Kumari Job and JobsNepal and apply to everything that fits, with a CV tailored to the role rather than a generic one. Refresh your profile on Rojgari and GenZ Link so it shows as active. Scan SajiloHire for listings from company career pages you would not otherwise see, and look up the salary data before any interview. Check your city's job groups once, and reply to leads the same day. Once a month, walk past the employment service centre to see what is posted.

Prepare the fixed documents once and keep scanned copies on your phone: citizenship certificate, passport photo, academic certificates, training and skill certificates, experience letters with dates on organisation letterhead, and a police clearance if the role needs one. Half of the semi-skilled vacancies in Nepal are filled by whoever can produce the documents this week.

Job fraud in Nepal follows a few patterns. The 'registration fee' or 'processing fee' to apply or be shortlisted. The 'training deposit' refundable after you start work, which is never refunded. The recruiter who wants your citizenship certificate or passport 'to hold' before there is a written offer. The data-entry or online-typing job that requires you to buy a kit or a subscription. The part-time job that pays only after you recruit others. And, for anyone tempted abroad, the manpower agent who collects money before the labour permit exists.

None of the platforms in this guide charge job seekers, and a real employer does not need your money to hire you. Where an offer involves any payment from you, stop. For foreign employment specifically, the guides on manpower fraud and labour permits linked below set out the legal process and the maximum fees.