Dear Camran,

Please see below:

You are right to an extent that this is the general scenario and candidates experience questions from these areas. However, if I remember correctly, in my case, I was not asked questions on optional subjects, and apart from a brief question on my current job in the development sector, nothing else was asked from the background either. I was indeed quized a lot on the national policies, governance models and public sector reforms etc. I think, this was more so because I have a degree in Governance & Public Policy so perhaps the pannel wanted to get my insight and understanding of Pakistan's Policy issues too. As for the Top 3 groups, again, I was repeatedly asked about my ideas for DMG (which was my top preference), but was not asked about the order of my preference or the second and third choice. In fact they could have asked me why I placed FSP so low on priority list (7th or 8th if I recall), but again nothing was asked there even.

For the IQ tests, you can easily find a lot of help material from the local market. This include books written for ISSB preparation, some books specifically written for the CSS interview, and some foreign books for IQ preparation. Go through them. They are all the same. What you need is a sufficient amount of practice to get you going on these sort of questions.

For the Personality tests, you should think through hard on all possible aspects of your personality, recalling and noting down small incidents from your life, which you can quote in response to different questions - verbal or written. Different batches have posted on this forum a large number of questions that were asked to them in their Psychological Assessments. You can compile their list and prepare them before hand. The actual questions asked to you on your psychological assessment would be a variation of these same ones.

For Command Task, you do not need to have any cadre specific knowledge to perform well. It requires simple common sense and general knowledge. What is more important, as I have mentioned before, is your attitude towards your team: how you make them understand the problem, how you take them along, etc. You should practice this activity with your friends and other qualifiers.

Not to sound too confident or haughty at all, I had decided to attempt for the Competitive Exam only once. I decided that I would give in my best the first time, and if I am capable enough for the service, and if God wants me to be of any value to the public, He would Himself make arrangements to take me there. In my opinion I could not have done any better in the second attempt, for I do not regret having left any weak corner the first time. Thus no point making an attempt again. Therefore, after my first attempt in 2010, I did not prepare for 2011 attempt and instead sat down working for my interview. In the end, it was the interview that paid me off.

Best of luck

Dear Camran,

Yellow pages is a good source to get an understanding of basic economics and policy issues. At the interview stage, you should take up and read any thing that comes to your way.. be it newspaper, journals or magazines. That should be enough for interview purposes. The panel does not expect you to be an economist unless you have a background education in economics or accounting etc.

Dear,

You can find that on my profile page. It is written there.

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Muhammad Ali Asghar