 Dear friends, during the past several years, Shankar's IS Academy has connected me with their mock interviews. I am called every year to chair the mock interviews and based on my experience during these mock interviews, I would like to share my observations and give some tips to the civil service aspirants. I hope that these will be useful to all of you. I think most essential and what you must always keep in mind is that when an interview is conducted, the interview board is assessing your suitability for a particular set of jobs which are the top jobs in their respective services in our country. When you attend a mock interview, somebody will say you need to improve your confidence. Somebody will say you speak too slow. You speak too fast. You are giving too many facts. You are not giving facts at all. So there will be different types of observations given to you and comments made on your performance. And these comments and observations are definitely going to guide you. Sometimes maybe confuse you. Sometimes maybe give you a feeling that you are not up to the mark. What is most essential for you to keep in mind is that the interview board, the UPSC board is not looking at you in fragments and they are not taking notes to say his English is slow. His personality is good. His way of talking is very pleasant. This is not how they assess you. Basically they are going to look at you as a potential person for occupying top positions in different services. So there will be an overall observation they will be making and all the elements that are pointed out by the interview boards that is by the mock interview boards are only components that go together to create that impression. Why I am telling you this is overall and first of all and most essential you must project yourself as a potentially very useful, very effective, very successful bureaucrat for the country. Keep this in mind as most important mantra. So now when I say that they are looking for a particular type of person the question is how do you prepare yourself for becoming that type of a person. What I suggest is that from the day you get an intimation about your date for interview start behaving like a bureaucrat. Cultivate the style of talking, the body language, the dignity, the gauravam as we may call it, the type of English that you would like to use, the subtlety of expressions, the maturity of analyzing situations. So cultivate all that. Now what happens is normally individuals who have appeared for the exams they are not trained, their parents have not trained them, the circumstances have not trained them to be bureaucrats unless they are maybe bureaucrats children and they might have seen bureaucrats in different situations. But a person from an ordinary normal family how does he behave, how does he talk, he may be for example influenced by a number of YouTube channel observations. What is the result? The result may be that his observations and his thinking may sometimes take an extreme note. This is not what is expected of a bureaucrat. So what should you do? You have to start first focusing on that reading material which provides you a balanced and subtler approach to issues. Standard newspapers, good channels especially Durudarshan and other channels where balanced views are produced, good websites and interact with people who can guide you in all this. But most important your style of sitting, your style of talking, your style of behaving with others that should be like a bureaucrat because it is not that you are going to adopt all this and adapt yourself to all this the moment you enter into the interview room. It does not happen. It takes months and months of practice to internalize the body language, the style of talking, the method of saying things succinctly, accurately and in a balanced manner. So follow this, become a bureaucrat the day you get your interview call or maybe even earlier. Why I made this point is because all of us know that when we sit among our friends, we talk very freely and express our views very freely. But when we are sitting in an interview board especially for this type of a job, we have to say things in a very responsible manner. So I will give an example from one of the mock interviews that we were conducting. When a slightly sensitive question was asked from a candidate, he spoke for some time and then he ended his observations with the sentence, when there is smoke there must be fire. But the way he put it was like making a very serious allegation in a manner which is not the best way of doing it. Let me not share more details than this, but I am sure the point must be clear that there is a subtler way of putting things across and you should start developing that subtler way and make it your 24 by 7 job from the day you start preparing for the interview. Don't just do it during the mock interviews or don't just do it maybe one week before the interview. Put it into your body and mind and internalize it so that it becomes a second habit with you so that you never say things which would appear to be loose talk to somebody. You must keep one thing in mind, you are going to be a part of the executive. The IAS, IPS, IRS and other service officers are the implementing arm of the executive of India. Now when you are a part of the executive it is quite natural that you have to be in alignment with the decisions of the government in power. Therefore when you are answering questions it is quite natural that if your views are found to be extreme against the government then either you will have to justify that and justify it in a manner that the members of the board are convinced that yes what this person is saying is absolutely correct or it will create an impression that you are not the type who would be ready to work with the government because the entire government, the executive is a huge single system. If a few parts of that system are always creating problem then the system cannot work. Beyond this I do not want to say anything what I can say is that if you want to get into the service then you have to be pragmatic otherwise if you are the type who does not like to be constrained by certain decisions of your superiors then there are thousands of other jobs going for one of them and you might feel more comfortable. I am sure I have made the point very clear. You must try to understand the full implications of the question that has been asked. Let me give an example. Let us say that one of the board members says India is one of the founders of the non-alignment movement and today India is siding with Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war. The question ends with do you think non-alignment is relevant today? So you might think that the question is whether non-alignment is relevant today or not. But the question also contains something that you have to contest that is the question says India is siding with Russia. So if you remain quiet that means you are agreeing with this statement. So you might have to start by saying sir I would beg to state that India is not siding with Russia but India is taking a stand which is correct in this situation in these circumstances. They might ask you how it is correct or they might leave that. But if you do not take cognizance of their saying this then in my opinion this would be a big miss. So do not just focus on whether non-alignment is relevant, irrelevant today but first contest what has been said and then after contesting it in one sentence go on to whether non-alignment is still relevant and you might say that the situations are changing ultimately non-alignment is the solution but in a world which is changing India has to take a position which is in its best interests. So that way you may give an answer but my point was when something is said which you find objectionable or unacceptable say a sentence about it. I have observed that some candidates sometimes make statements which have negative implications and negative connotations in one of the interviews for central police services for example when a candidate was asked why he had given preference for CASF rather than CRPF. His answer was that CASF training is not very vigorous and not very rigorous therefore he would get time to prepare for IES. Now this may not be the best answer because essentially you are saying that if you join the CASF you are not going to give your best to the service. A better answer might be to say that India is industrializing very fast therefore CASF is a very important force from your point of view that is why you want to join. So there are answers which have branches implications that you might not have expected or anticipated. So train yourself to think in such a way that you are able to know like a chess game you know which side is the movement going that you should be able to anticipate and prevent in advance. One important matter that you must keep in mind is how long should your answers be. Now in this connection I can give you a general tip that is we can classify questions into two types. One are knowledge based questions and the others are opinion type of or analysis type of questions. For example a knowledge based question could be in what way has the position of women in our society changed after independence. Now in this question there are some 10-12 points which you may have to mention. So there is no need for you to elaborate on every point for example if you say that women have now started occupying different jobs, different positions that should be enough you do not have to keep explaining that in detail. So basically an answer to this type of a question should be a comprehensive list of bullet points that is what would be expected. This has happened, this has happened, this has happened, this has happened and then if the board member asks for details or greater analysis of any of the points you can definitely give that. But there are other questions where there is expected to be analysis and explanation or presentation of an opinion or a position on a particular issue. For example the Hijab issue or the issue of disqualification of Mr. Rahul Gandhi or whether democracy is in danger in India or there could be any number of questions where different positions can be taken and it is not that you are going to give 10 bullet points here. Here you are going to take a particular position and then you are going to explain it with maybe arguments or examples or data or whatever you wish. So there is a difference and these are in fact the questions that is the questions where opinions are involved. These are the questions where you are more likely to falter and these are the questions which can also build your image or the opinion in your favor very well. So practice these two different types of questions. There is a lot that can be said but I would now restrict myself to just one more point that is about your command over English language. Since you are going to give your answers in English therefore your fluency and your command over English makes a lot of difference this is the most crucial factor in an interview. What happens is when we are trying to frame sentences then words of that language come first to our mind which we usually use. Now let us say that I speak mostly in Tamil or in Hindi or in some other language then when an idea comes to my mind and I am looking for words then it is the words of Hindi or Tamil which will come to my mind first and then I will have to push them back and call the English word in its place. Therefore if for about a month or at least one or two weeks before your interview you make it a habit to talk 24 by 7 in English then what will happen is in the upper story of your mind English words will be rotating and moving around. So when you are looking for words or for a particular situation or argument it is the English words which will first rush to your mind and you will not have difficulty. Another thing that you can do for language point of view is to keep collecting those expressions which are generally used to give certain arguments or to express certain types of views. If you go through the newspapers especially the articles you will find that certain expressions are often used in those articles. So those expressions by frequent use have acquired a kind of terminology value for these situations. So if you pick up all those words keep noting them down in a diary keep passing them through your mind keep framing sentences using those words and expressions then what will happen is when you are giving an answer then those expressions will come to your mind and what you might otherwise say in 10 sentences you might be able to say in just 2 or 3 or 4 sentences. So I have given you a few tips and I have exchanged I have shared some of my observations with you. If you would like to ask any questions if you have doubts or if you have questions which you would like to ask maybe you can get in touch with Shankar's IAS Academy. They can pass on the questions to me and I can answer them either in one of the social media or maybe through another video. All the best to all of you and thanks for watching this video. All my best to you. Thank you very much.