This article meant for those who cleared RBI Grade “B” officer written exam in 2013 and preparing for interview stage:

  1. Prologue
  2. Questions asked to me:
  3. WARNING about low scores
  4. My observations about the RBI Interviews
  5. Work-profile of Grade “B” Officer
  6. Career growth/promotion as RBI Grade “B” Officer
  7. Job Hierarchy in RBI

Prologue

I had asked Mr.Ramdhan Dagar to share some wisdom about RBI interviews. (He was serving as RBI Grade “B” officer, then he got AIR-500 in Civil service exam 2012 exam- that too without coaching, and left the job.)
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Mr. Dagar replies through email:
Although I don’t remember all the details of what transpired during my RBI interview in 2012 now, but this is what I can share:

Questions asked to me:

Ramdan Dagar UPSC Topper RBI Interview

  1. Graduation related: Two questions from cost accounting relating to standard costing and cost benefit analysis because I am a graduate in commerce.
  2. Location Based: They asked a lot about the social problems plaguing my home state (Haryana)- the most prominent was obviously relating to khap panchayats and the status of women in Haryana. Some questions about the industrial development in Haryana.
  3. RBI related: Absolutely nothing from economics. The entire interview related to questions on my educational and personal background.
  4. Hobby based: One question about my hobby.
  5. And one question that i distinctly remember was “are you preparing for civil services‘ and if yes what are your optional subjects?. (My advice is don’t try to hide it from them because they will ask this question only when they get sure about the candidate being an IAS aspirant).

WARNING about low scores

  • RBI is notorious for awarding very poor marks in interview. There were people with me in training who even got 0(ZERO) out of 50.
  • Scores of 5,6,7,8,9 10 are pretty common.
  • Even people from the senior batches had same type of pathetic marks in interview.
  • By the way I got 24 marks and the highest was 30. (Mrunal comments:- you had recieved three digit scores in each paper of Public Administration in civil service main 2012- that too without coaching, and now we know that you even got high score in RBI interviews. Indeed man, **respect**)

My observations about the RBI Interviews

  1. I didn’t find any coherency between the interviews of mine and my friends(when we discussed about it during our training in Chennai)
  2. It was total random stuff thrown at almost all the people but yes guys appearing this time should brush up their bio-data, the basic fundamentals of Indian economy and RBI related current affairs.
  3. One interesting thing about the interviews for the grade ‘b’ is that it is one single panel which interviews every candidate.
  4. The panel goes from one center to another to carry this out and the people interviewing are 5 out of which one would definitely be a very senior functionary of a public sector bank (executive director or something).

Work-profile of Grade “B” Officer

  • It depends on the department the person lands up in and also on the regional office to some extent.
  • The best place to work is obviously Mumbai for the simple reason that you can learn the in & outs of central banking there because of it being the headquarters.
  • But yes there is immense diversity in the work that you do even within the departments.
  • There are very good departments like the rural planning and credit dept, foreign exchange dept, external investments and operations dept., banking supervision etc and
  • Then there’re graveyards like the issue dept.(dealing with currency), estate and premises dept etc.
  • Overall the work culture is quite good with some excellent facilities provided to the employees.

Career growth/promotion as RBI Grade “B” Officer

  • There is nothing to worry about in this one as it is only the grade ‘b’ officers who rise on in the organization and occupy the top seats.
  • There are 2 (out of 4) posts of deputy governor reserved for grade ‘b’ officers.
  • Also all the executive directors and regional directors are people who were recruited as grade ‘b’.
  • Currently there’s problem only with the first promotion which takes about 7 years and then its 4 to 5 years on an average.

Job Hierarchy in RBI

  1. Governor
  2. Dy. Governor (total 4) please note: two seats are reserved for Grade “B” officers.
  3. ED (total 10)
  4. chief general manager (regional director) (gr f)
  5. general manager (grade E)
  6. deputy general manager (grade D)
  7. asst. general manager (grade C)
  8. manger (grade B)
  9. Asst. manager (grade A)
  10. senior assistants
  11. assistants/ stenographers
  12. other staff

The thing is about 90-95% people are under grade ‘b’ DR( direct recruit).

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Thanks a lot Mr.Dagar, for sharing these details with the aspirants.
@RBI players, kindly share your detailed interview experience in the comments, when it is over. Best wishes.