Originally Posted by orangeemperor25

a former member of the ppsc who retired as secretary to govt of punjab and than served as member ppsc from 2000 to 2006 lives near my house i sought guidance from him on scoring trends in interviews of pms since he was member of the interview panel 3 times during his tenure he said that we people while conducting interviews are not at all impressed by the fact that one candiate has got 700 marks in written and just declare him pass without seeing anything else according to him punjabi has always been a scoring subject and in his years majority of the people got 130+ marks going as high as 170 but he said that we usually grilled these people more in interviews because we know that the examiner has done loose marking and they dont deserve such high marks so more searching questions were put to them and most of the candidates were not even able to explain the abc of punjabi so we gave them low scores or outrightly failed them secondly he said that a person who has got say 610 or 620 with a low scoring combination appears before the panel and performs well does not becomes nervous and handles pressure well even if he drops as many as 4 to 5 questions impresses the panel more and is more likely to get allocated as the purpose of the interview is to ascertain ones personality and his mental approach and apptitude he admitted before me that the marking system of both fpsc and ppsc is flawed since some examiners blindly give numbers whereas some others do not even give average marks to highly deserving candidates and because of this thing the role of interview becomes extremely important and he says that on the basis of his experience he can say that people with high scores are usually not intelligent and people with low scores are more sharp and because of this we have to give exceptionally high grade to low scoring candidates but with high iq level and that is the reason why fingers are raised every time both in css and pms that look they have favoured someone who had 601 marks with say 180 marks in interview but the fact of the matter is that he deserved those marks but his written score was not in consonnance with his calibre due to a number of reasons he also asked me that tell yourself does that person who has for example got more than 750 marks is not able to speak even one word of correct english does not gives logical answers and is shaky and nervous does not makes eye contanct with the the interivewer and is trembling does he deserves to be allocated he advised that all candidates should appear in interviews with positive frame of mind and even if they are aware that they have got only 600 marks they should not loose hope give their best in the interview and think of the interview as a 20/20 match even if you loose wickets in the opening overs you should play till the end confidently dropping questions is not something perceived negative it is how you conduct yourself which is important and in the end he said that it all depends on your luck if the panel likes you they will award you high marks to compenste for you low marks in written i have quoted my conversation with him word by word so as to encourage everyone and give them an insight that how the panels work the name of this man is Ch Riaz Warriach he is a distinguished civil servant served as DC and Comissioner and secretary to govt he served under three chairman ppsc as he got two tenures as member ppsc so i hope that this conversation will help everyone