The interview round for the UPSC Civil Services 2019 is round the corner; this is also called a personality test, which will decide who among the 2,300 candidates will be appointed to the most coveted IAS/IPS/IFS postings.
Essentially, the interview is a series of interactions — a dialogue with a group of people, and your life ambition is at stake. Therefore, you cannot afford to be casual or careless. At the same time, you need not panic. If you know the rules of the game, you can succeed.
The interview has to proceed along a well-set procedure, which is the interview process. A process is defined as “a series of actions taken towards achieving a particular end”. In an interview, a process does take place and you should be aware of it and be prepared to face it. The cardinal principle in any interview is ‘sit up’, ‘speak up’, and ‘shut up’.
Evaluation process
The five steps that take place during the interview process are:
Introduction and initiation: An interview cannot start without the candidate being introduced to the interviewer or the panel of interviewers. Here, you must remember the old dictum: the first impression is the best impression. In the civil services interview, the candidate is called out by his/her name and therefore he/she need not repeat it. Nevertheless, should a member ask for the candidate’s name, he/she should politely say it.
The appearance of the candidate conveys to the interviewers the kind of person he/she is; this would greatly affect the subsequent communication between them.
Recent studies have shown that the effectiveness of communication is 10% by the meaning of words, 30% by the voice and its authority, and 60% by the body language.
The body language is the key to your success in the interview.
Testing your knowledge about yourself: More often than not, the real interview starts with a question about your personal setting, say your native state or district or town.
This is what you should acquaint yourself with — if you haven’t done earlier: learn more about your native place. For, this is the more likely of all the questions you could be asked in the interviews. For example, if you are from Chennai, the likely questions are: Who founded Chennai and when? What were the old names of Chennai?
Questions could also be about your subject in the graduate or postgraduate degree, or about your hobbies.
Testing your understanding of the subjects: True, the subject knowledge was tested in the written (main) exam. Nevertheless, the members may like to measure the depth of your understanding and your ability to analyse the subjects you have studied in college or for the civil services examinations.
There could be recent developments in your subject of study that is of great interest. Sometimes, the member may be a professor in the subject in which you wrote the main examinations, or it may even be a subject of current interest such as cross border terrorism, CAA, the Ayodhya verdict, economic slow down, and so on. You should be prepared and not be caught off guard.
Therefore, it is best to keep the academic pot boiling even after the main exam so that you can answer the questions related to the optional subjects with ease and without any mistakes.
Testing the personality: Your personality will be assessed in the due course of an interview. If you learn the fundamental rules of the principles of personality, you can perhaps modify your behaviour to a desirable level, which is called personality development.
Conclusion: When the chairman and the board members of the interview panel feel that enough questions were asked, the candidate is in the concluding part of the interview.
You should be cautious not to get up from your chair until you are asked to leave, even if you are given an impression that the interview is over. You should wait for few seconds to confirm that they are through with you and want you to leave. Then, rise and say politely, “Thank you, sir/ma’am”, and leave the hall.
The writer is the Director-General of Police (Railways).
