Understanding the a,b,c of UPSC interview as the UPSC main result approaches for 2019.

Congratulations! on clearing Mains exam and having earned opportunity to appear in UPSC interview, It is my humble effort to guide few candidates to make most of this opportunity.The article below is a description of my understanding of the process of interview.

 Interview is a process to understand the caliber of a candidate and to gauge the suitability of candidate for the post being offered. If one goes through the advertisement published by UPSC it says The object of the interview is to assess the personal suitability of the candidate for a career in public service by a Board of competent and unbiased observers. The test is intended to judge the mental caliber of a candidate.

As a civil servant one is supposed to take decisions based on the inputs received from colleagues and the officer’s assessment. To assess this ability of a person to take a balanced decision and be able to justify it and conveying it to the colleagues is a definite quality required in a civil servant. UPSC says the following on this aspect in its advertisement, In broad terms this is really an assessment of not only his intellectual qualities but also social traits and his interest in current affairs. Some of the qualities to be judged are mental alertness, critical powers of assimilation, clear and logical exposition, balance of judgement, variety and depth of interest, ability for social cohesion and leadership, intellectual and moral integrity.

Let’s list the qualities expected by the UPSC as quoted in above statement

• ·         Intellectual qualities
• ·         Social traits and interest in current affairs

Intellectual qualities are a definite indicator and a candidate appearing in Interview has intellectual qualities and therefore has been given an opportunity to appear. But social traits can be a tricky affair because not everyone is equally interested in all happenings which inspire attention of the candidate appearing in interview. In a way candidate is expected to have a understanding of the issue and not just being informed about it and the panel should be conveyed the opinion on an issue convincingly.

However, this quality of Social trait and interest in current affair is actually an anchor for the panel to understand the other aspects and qualities of the candidate. Although the Detailed Application Form(DAF), which has complete record of candidate’s education and experience is also used for furthering the discussion to understand the following qualities of the candidate

• ·         mental alertness,
• ·         critical powers of assimilation,
• ·         clear and logical exposition,
• ·         balance of judgement,
• ·         variety and depth of interest,
• ·         ability for social cohesion and leadership,
• ·         intellectual and moral integrity

During my interview I had a question/ story   on use of social media, and through my answers my alertness, assimilation(understanding), logical exposition, balance of judgement was put on display.

Conclusion of the discussion was social media is not bad, it is the user who abuses it and it can be controlled through proper government advisories and rules. But to arrive at this conclusion I had to give examples of good and bad uses and how social media in itself is neutral.

One very important trait in all this is the candidate’s ‘trainability’. A candidate is not civil servant when he is appearing in interview nor is that expected. But the trainability of candidate i.e., the readiness to accept and learn inputs over 1.5 to 2 year of training in academy so that a bright officer is pushed out as a product is obtained, ready to accept the challenges of the field.

We will discuss more on this issue and ofcourse what is required when actually facing the panel in next few articles on this blog. 

Thanks guys!
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