Appearing for UPSC Interview 2021 ? Know how does your job experience matter ! - Examarly Blog
UPSC Interview is the last and crucial stage of UPSC Exam and a lot of aspirants who have successfully cracked the civil services exam have job experience. Well having a job experience is quite an advantage in general life as it helps in developing several skills, but in UPSC journey it does not holds any weightage.
The age limit for UPSC CSE is 21-32 years of age and there are some age relaxations also as per the category. Nearly at the age of 21, a lot of students finish their graduation and start earning. Till the age of 32, it is quite common to be in a job, and a lot of youngsters who have job experience wants to prepare for the Civil Services Examination or commonly known as UPSC exam. It is one of the examinations conducted by the Union Public Service Commission to recruit suitable candidates for A-Grade Officers like IAS (Indian Administrative Service), IFS (Indian Foreign Services), IPS (Indian Police Services) and for other allied services.
You can check its exam pattern and syllabus of UPSC CSE here.
Given that job experience has not weightage in UPSC, often candidates see their jobs as disadvantage and hindrance in preparation. However, there are plenty of examples every year of candidates that demonstrate exemplary time management to crack the exam with their full-time job like AIR-35 Aparna Ramesh.
The fact is there is no extra weightage of work experience in the Civil services exam unlike demanded by various Institutes like IIMs. All candidates are treated equally as it is mentioned above that the minimum qualification for this exam is any Graduation degree from any recognized university. There are a lot of experienced jobholders who sit in this exam but they do not get any extra weightage in the selection of IAS, IPS, IFS, or any allied services of UPSC CSE.
It is also true that work experience attracts different questions for a candidate in the UPSC CSE Interview as it is a personality test and they test you for every experience you have whether it is for a job or any other experience related to skills or life.
Work experience influences the mind of the Interview panel board as they are very interested in knowing about your job shift and “Why do you actually want to go for UPSC CSE if you are working in a corporate job or any other Government services ?” They want to know your real motive for joining UPSC Civil services as you are going to be an administrator or a leader in prestigious Government service.
A lot of candidates are there who have worked for various prestigious corporate companies with handsome salaries and a lot of Doctors, Engineers, and MBA graduates are also there who want to join this service. Therefore, it becomes a necessity for a candidate to defend his/her choice of joining civil services especially when you are not from an Arts background or any non-professional degree background.
The UPSC interview questions are often not only asked because of the interest interview panel has towards know the candidate, but also to assess the situation-handling ability of the candidate. Being in a job, candidates encounter situations where their situation-handling, decision making and trade-off making abilities gets tested, which also aligns with the abilities of civil servants. Hence, these kind of questions are quite common from all the candidates.
However, once you join the Civil service, you have some added advantages of your job experience. For example, if you have worked for a company or worked in any firm whether it is NGO or any Public sector job for a year or more then it is surely going to help you in better understanding of the working process with different sort of people. You can have the experience of medical background, IT background or any other background which will surely help you in assisting and administering the sector you have worked in as being an administrator not only means that you are only going to sign different Government papers or documents.
Being an administrator means you should have a proper understanding of the working environment. Any sort of work experience is useful because you already have learned to deal with people which is one of the most important qualities of a Civil servant.
