SSC screening tests on the lines of GRE

These tests with GRE-like scores are planned to be held every week in all major centres across the country at three levels and candidates’ scores will be valid for two years, N K Raghupathy, Chairman, SSC, New Delhi, said on Saturday.

Students who have completed matriculation, higher secondary and graduation  can appear for the tests.

 These scores will be taken for later stages of exams at higher levels of government recruitment and promotions, Raghupathy said at a workshop.

With a three-fold increase in the number of applicants to the SSC, the talent pool has to be rationalised to avoid overlapping with other pan-Indian state-backed recruitment bodies such as the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection, which mainly recruits people at clerical and probationary officers’ levels for banking and insurance sectors, he said.
Stating that he has sent a proposal to this effect to the Ministry of Personnel, Rathupathy expressed hope that the new screening tests would take off in 2011.  It will give students at various qualification-levels flexibility to retake the tests “just as you can re-sit for GRE” to improve scores, he noted.

The scores will be the basis for initial screening for various government jobs and will be followed by other conventional tests depending on the posts, he said.

Rise in applicants

The total applications by unemployed youths to the SSC have seen a phenomenal increase this year (up to Nov 2010) at 20.82 lakh, Raghupathy said. Along with the backlog, the SSC held exams for 30 lakh applicants so far.     

Of these 14,898 successful candidates from across India have got jobs so far this year, but the Southern region’s (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry) contribution to that pool has been only 845 candidates.

Karnataka and Kerala areas form a separate branch of the Southern region. Raghupathy said UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and the NCR of Delhi continue to account for over 60 per cent of successful candidates’ recruitment for the third year running.

In SSC recruitments, for every 140 applicants, one gets a Central Government job.
But for the Southern Chennai region, this ratio was much lower, with only one out of every 200 applicants getting a job, Raghupathy said.