For a fortnight now, thousands of candidates have been awaiting interview calls from about a dozen public sector banks. These banks have about 12,500 officer jobs on offer.
About 1.10 lakh candidates passed the common written exam conducted by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS).
The scorecard issued by IBPS (for a total of 250 marks) is valid for a year and enables candidates to qualify for the selection process (group discussion, interview, etc.) conducted by different banks.
Cut-offs for qualifying
Banks have the discretion to fix their own cut-offs for qualifying.
Ergo, the minimum cut-off adopted by different banks ranged from as low as 125 to as high as 166 marks. The low cut-offs announced by some banks raised hopes of many candidates who thought they stood a good chance of selection.
Yet, they found the wait only getting longer and anxiety levels rising as they watched bank after bank calling only the toppers. Social media and discussion groups have seen a number of aspirants vent their ire about what they term a ‘flawed process'.
No candidate disputes the discretion of the bank to call toppers. But as one of the hopefuls, Bijeta, said, “Why did banks fix a low cut-off mark if they are anyway going to call toppers? And the same candidates get multiple interview calls from various banks.”
There is no explanation from banks as to why they fixed low cut-off marks. While admitting that only toppers get the call, officials say, in their defence, that they don't have prior access to IBPS scores of individual candidates. They come to know of them only when the candidates apply for the jobs.
Responding to the criticism that the same candidates get offers from all banks, bank officials say that this is unavoidable. They say that, they cannot in all fairness deny any candidate the right to apply or appear for an interview just because they may get offers from other banks.
Banks do concede that candidates lose some money - spending Rs 200 for each of the 19 banks individually - but have no solution to offer on this.
Perhaps it might help matters if IBPS puts out a ranking of candidates or provided some statistics on how many people have scored marks in different frequency intervals.
This may give candidates a clearer assessment of their chances and mitigate their disappointment.