Time to work again?

Back in Bangalore after a 20 day stint in Kannur, and I realise yet again that for some strange reason it is extremely difficult to do any serious study when I’m home! I believe this is true for most people; which is probably why a large chunk of people head to Delhi for civil services preparations year after year. More than the quality of coaching it is the ‘away from home factor’ and the complete freedom and ‘me- time’ that it gives which helps a great deal. A six month period of quiet contemplation and strategic planning (devoid of poky neighbours, well wishers and anxious parents worrying about their qualified and ‘unemployed’ neighbour/friend/daughter/son) should indeed help.

In these tumultuous times of worldwide financial misery, finding a job is not exactly an easy proposition. More importantly should I be working again so soon? Should I not be preparing for the interview? I jolly well know how it is going to be once I start working. 11 hours in the office and 3 hours on the road commuting! That would leave me hardly anytime to read the daily newspapers, forget doing any other serious reading with the interview in mind. Therefore, choosing to work in these few weeks has the risk of being under-prepared if and when the interview call comes.

So how about a part time job? Hmm…that indeed is worth considering :-)

A-Person- like- me moment

‘A Person like me’.

This is one of the key responses that Market Researchers look for in questionnaires administered to a test group in a Pre-ad test.

Pre ad tests are conducted by Advertising/Market Research companies to assess/pre-determine the effectiveness, usefulness & impact among other things of a certain newly created ad.

To do all of the above, the ad in question is shown to the test group masked as a clutter. A good example of a clutter that can be used to test the effectiveness of say, a Pril dish wash bar would be the following bunch of TV ads in random order:

Santoor sandalwood soap

Pond’s cold cream

Lakme nail polish

Pril dish wash bar

Wheel detergent powder

The target group is led to believe that the exercise is aimed at conducting TV/media studies to avoid prejudicing/biasing its responses.

Once the respondent has seen the clutter, she is taken through a questionnaire.
Among the scores of multiple choice questions, appears the one below

The said product would normally be used by ______________ (Tick all that apply)

- Working women

- Upper Class Women

- Educated Women

- Women like me

- Housewives

- Teenagers

- Fashionable women

- Middle class women

The researcher only cares if the response ‘Women like me’ is ticked; the other responses are dummy ones really.

If an ad is able to evoke/evince a response from a respondent to the effect that the advertised product or service is relevant/useful/used/essential to/by/for ‘people like me’, that means a great lot to the advertiser!

Phew, that has been a long introduction ….

So why exactly am I talking about Market Research here?

I had a person-like-me moment last week when the results of the civil service exams 2007 were announced. A friend who secured All India Rank 14 caused this.

This does two things to me:

Boosts confidence level and motivation to astronomical levels :-)

On the flip side, there is this huge pressure to match or better that. One can no longer be contented with a rank like 372 or 531!

Impartiality of the UPSC

The ‘efficient’ folks at UPSC take as much as a month to reveal the detailed marks of the written exams after declaring if one has qualified for the interview or not.( The whole exam process takes as much as 16 months!. There are comparable exams like CAT which is also taken by an equal number of students but the final results of the latter are out in under 5 months!!)

It is during this one month’s period that one’s thoughts go wild that stem from the disbelief of having not cleared the mains.

Not getting an interview call makes one immediately question the fairness and impartiality of UPSC and also the alignment of certain stars in the celestial space that might potentially have had a say in the disastrous outcome.

Did my papers reach a certain drunken professor?

Was my paper corrected immediately after s/he quarreled with her/his spouse?

Were my liberal views on the ‘dance bars’ question in the GS paper seen as lack of Indianess by the orthodox elderly professor who disapproves of all kinds of dances?

Were my mildly leftist views in the GS papers not taken too kindly by the capitalist gentleman/lady who evaluated it?

DS called to discuss and analyze his mains results and to reaffirm our faith in the impartiality and fairness of UPSC. He sounded upbeat and optimistic. Gone were the uncertain what ifs of the past month.

He had scored an astonishing 170/ 300 (56.67%) in paper I of Geography (Optional I) and a respectable 140/300 (46.67%) in paper I of Psychology (Optional II).

Why the superlative adjectives against the scores that borders around the halfway percentage mark? Those not in the know might wonder.

Here is why:

The UPSC Mains written exams for civil services is set for a total of 2000 marks divided as follows:

300 each for the Paper I and paper II of optional I adding up to 600 for optional I

300 each for the Paper I and paper II of optional II adding up to 600 for optional II

300 each for the Paper I and paper II of the mandatory General Studies paper adding up to 600 for GS

200 for Essay Writing in English.

A score in the neighborhood of 1050 takes things to the next level and gets one an Interview call. Clearly the key to an interview call is scoring a little over 52.5% in all of these papers individually.

And if one scores a whopping 55 %, one is talking about a higher rank and a service of one’s choice.

What is comforting in the situation is the knowledge that a score in optional I added up to 270/600 as 170/300 + 100/300 and not as 133/300 + 137/300. The former indicates that one is capable of breaching the 55% barrier and that with effort the 100 of paper II can be brought to the neighborhood of 150.

The later case is worrisome because, one is unsure of one’s writing skills and keeps wondering if one’s best written answers are at all capable of giving decent scores.

With his faith restored, DS has vowed to redouble his efforts.

He thinks it was just average !

He quoted Nirad C Chaudhary. "The average Indian male has sex on his mind and fear in his heart". And explained further, “Though we have sex on our minds, because of the fear in our hearts, imbibed from our value systems, there hasn’t been much violence against women. But lately, because of globalisation and other factors, the fear in the heart has been decreasing. Also, the sex on the mind is increasing, thanks to the soft porn in the media. This explains the increasing violence against women.”

And this was in response to a lady member of the UPSC interview board who asked HK why violence against women was increasing and what could be done about it.

I wonder if anyone can better that answer.
Apart from the original thinking, presence of mind and maturity, it displays among other things a great sense of humor.

Despite brilliant answers like these HK doubts if his interview went well, primarily because he wasn’t asked ‘expected’ questions on one’s bio-data and ‘home-state’ on which UPSC has a reputation of asking a barrage of questions, for which one goes with more than adequate preparations.

Me thinks HK's doubts are entirely misplaced.

The Interview call that never came :(

One puts in everything for the Mains. So not getting an interview call can be quite shattering. The most destructive and self defeating of thoughts begin to creep in. “Can I possibly do better than what I have already done. Haven’t I worked really really hard? I haven’t made it despite all that. Do I really stand a chance in which case?"

Though one wouldn’t admit it openly, just about everyone who writes the Mains exams expects an interview call. This is probably because they gain confidence after clearing the first hurdle in the form of the Prelims. And everyone positively works really really hard in the few weeks separating the declaration of Prelims results and the Mains examination.

Even if one is a little less satisfied with a certain answer in the Optional paper and that bouncer in the General Studies paper that only economists/historians can answer, weeks after the Mains exams one tends to actually forget one’s performance. That is the optimist in one, becomes increasingly assertive and dominant in wishful thinking.

It’s very demoralizing and painful and takes weeks to get over.
So when DS called from Delhi to unburden his heart, I lived through the pain and bitterness of summer of 2007 all over again.

I tried my best to put him at ease and cheer him up, but deep down we both knew that it was actually a matter of time.