> only way to pass is to know someone who can give you the questions in advance
RRB is remarkably transparent. You can download past papers going back two decades & study them. There are multiple youtube channels that solve all of these problems & tell you the strats explicitly. Current events & GK culture is a thing in India. Lots of common folk pride themselves on knowing the answers to these questions. I wouldn't consider this gatekeeping by any means.
Presumably they don't repeat the same questions so I don't really see how the past question bank is so helpful when the possible subject matter is incredibly broad. That said apparently what I've heard is wrong and people do manage to pass these just by studying.
On the larger point, trivia is popular here in the US too but I would be amazed to see sports trivia questions on a government exam. It's hard to understand what the legitimate purpose of these questions could be for someone applying to be a train conductor.
Aside: In case anyone else wondered GK is apparently General Knowledge, it took me a while to find that initialism since I wasn't familiar with it.
When you interview at Blackrock in SF, they walk you thru a bunch of rooms. Each room has a door. On each door is the name of a famous economist. When the interview begins, you have to recollect all of these economists and then drop some tidbits about each of them. You know, to signal that you are part of the in-group. Like, you can say hey wasn’t Krugman at Princeton when he got the Nobel but doesn’t he teach at cuny now because that’s where your phd advisor saw him last week hint hint. Now, would you rather do such obsequious ass-kissing, or remember that ALU stands for arithmetic logic unit ? Compared to Blackrock, Railway Board is god, son and holy ghost rolled into one.
That seems pretty weird but at least you are expected to demonstrate that you have a genuine interest in the field outside some narrow specialization (or would talking about their actual work not count as “tidbits”?
The listed Indian train service exam questions just seem beyond absurd in comparison. If the questions were about random niche train related trivia it would make a whole lot more sense (of course still stupid..)
This is being discussed in the context of the Chinese test which required memorizing enormous numbers of facts. An example question for a train test requires knowing human anatomy to the degree of classifying individual organs.
I am failing to see how that is anything but blocking those who cannot dedicate themselves to the test.
There are more sailors than ships. In this context, something like 10000 applicants for a single rrb vacancy. You don’t want the railways to be nepotistic. Nor do you want legacy admits. Nor money power to dominate. What’s left ? Well, how about - leetcode has 6720 permutations. Find the 100th one by hand, when ranked alphabetically.
One of my friends got this question last week at a bog standard Java IT job, in Bangalore, with over 1000 applicants. Its a fair question, just a little bit of math and arranging alphabets. Doesn’t mean he has to devote itself to handcomputing permutations for the entirety of his life. Its one day of interviews and you get to know if you are selected by 4pm same day. Perfectly fair imo. The standard gs interviews during my time took 12 separate rounds with 12 teams, were completely non-transparent, and you spent a whole month not knowing whether you are in or out. I would rather permute leetcode. Similarly, let the railway board applicant sweat a little. Its a government job for life with handsome pension to boot.
> Similarly, let the railway board applicant sweat a little. Its a government job for life with handsome pension to boot.
So just have a general aptitude, “IQ style”(of course bot directly) test? Or better yet base your questions on things that are actually relevant to the job?
The purpose of tests like that is to select to people who have nothing better to do but waste their time learning pointless trivia. Seems extremely suboptimal..
Or you could just set the test for the actual prerequisites, then run a lottery on those who pass to decide who to interview.
Statistically the individual's chances are the same, but you free up a not-insignificant amount of work and stress that could be spent on more productive areas.
> I wouldn't consider this gatekeeping by any means.
Seems to be pretty absurd, though? Basing your hiring decisions on entirely pointless trivia? Looks like a good way to filter out candidates unwilling to demean themselves to such nonsense
There’s a game on my Quest - I don’t remember which one - where when you hold the controllers up close to your face it pops up the controls, with arrows pointing to each button.
That should be all but standardized, other than exceptions in games where that could be a problem.
It’s not so bad when you’re used to the system, but giving it to someone and trying to explain what button does what isn’t exactly fun. You usually end up needing to move their fingers for them, and playing a weird version of that scene from Ghost with my father-in-law isn’t my version of a good time.
It's not that exciting - I was already halfway out the door for unrelated reasons. It's a problem that almost any company in that space shares. It's made me put a strong premium on working for companies that sell a real product for real money, today.
Hearing from friends that there were a lot of last minute shenanigans like poll locations getting changed, candidates election symbols getting changed (important given the lack of literacy).
Every time I've purchased a used car from a real person, getting it to my mechanic for a once-over has never been a problem. Usually, they've let me take the car there myself pre-purchase, sometimes wanting me to leave some sort of collateral (such as the car I drove to them in). They already know where I live and what my phone number is, so if I steal their car, the cops won't have any problem finding me.
A couple of times, I've been fine with buying the car first, but with a clause in a sales contract saying that I have the right to return the car within 3 days for a full refund (basically replicating the effects of my state's lemon law. The lemon law only applies to new car purchases).
But the mechanic's check has never actually revealed any issues that the seller hadn't already disclosed to me. People tend to be pretty honest about those sorts of things.
