When did Gen Musharraf visit India on so-and-so trip?
A) Oct 10th 2004 B) Oct 8th 2004 ...
(I made the answers up, but I distinctly remember the days being 2 days apart)
https://prepp.in/rrb-recruitment-exam/practice-papers
> 1. In Computers, what does ALU stand for?
> 5. BJP had won how many seats in the Lok Sabha election 2019?
> 20. In which of the following states of India is the Moatsu festival celebrated?
> 51. Who among the following was the first cricket player to win Arjun Award?
> 62. Which is the shortest part of small intestine?
I have heard that the 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.
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.
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..)
I am failing to see how that is anything but blocking those who cannot dedicate themselves to the test.
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..
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.
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