Introduction:

Public Sector Banking has become an illustrious career option in current times as it comes with the promise of attractive salary, perks, job security, fast growth and good work-life balance. Government of India had set up Personnel Selection Services (PPS) in 1975 for recruitment of probationary officers and clerks to all public-sector banks. PSS was later changed to Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) in 1984as per the mandate of Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Eligible and interested Candidates are required to register online for the recruitment process on the official IBPS website, ibps.in. The 3-tiered selection process consists of Preliminary and Main Exams which will be conducted online, followed by Interview. Candidates must pass each exam to get shortlisted and progress to the next stage. Final selection will be based on Mains and Interview merit.

Probationary Officers (PO) and Management Trainees (MT) are recruited every year through a Common Written Examination (CWE), commonly known as the IBPS PO exam. The CWE was started in 2011 and is being conducted for the eighth time this year and hence is officially called IBPS PO /MT CWE VIII 2018.The IBPS PO selection process consists of 3 phases (preliminary, mains and interview) and the candidate must qualify each of them to proceed to the next phase. Mentioned below are the important steps of the IBPS PO Recruitment Process:

Online Preliminary Examination:

An adequate number of candidates in each category are shortlisted by IBPS depending upon requirements for Online Main Examination

Online Mains Examination:

Candidates must qualify the sectional as well as overall cutoff in the main exam to be eligible for interview.

Interview:

Interview will be conducted by the Participating Organizations and coordinated by the Nodal Bank in each State/ UT with the help of IBPS

Final Result:

The Final result is declared on the basis of candidates combined performance in IBPS PO Mains and Interview Rounds.

Provisional Allotment:

The provisional allotment of the qualified candidate is released on the official website. The IBPS Banks are allotted based on candidates' preferences which are made at the time of online application.

IBPS plays its part in the selection process only till the provisional allotment to different banks. After that, the responsibility to intimate the qualified candidates about their joining dates and procedure lies with the respective banks.

Exam Pattern

As in the previous years, the IBPS exam (CWE 8) for hiring candidates will be based on an online written exam in two parts: Tier 1 or IBPS Preliminary Exam and Tier 2 or IBPS Mains Exam. This examination is followed by a face-to-face interview process.

Prelims Exam Pattern

The IBPS PO preliminary examination has a total duration of 1 hour and is conducted in online mode. It consists of 3 sections with a total of 100 questions and maximum score of 100 marks. There is negative marking in IBPS PO pre exam and 0.25 marks are deducted for each wrong answer. Candidates must clear the cut-off in all 3 sections to qualify for the IBPS PO Main exam. The section-wise details are given below:

SL.	Name of test(Objective>	No. of Questions	Maximum Marks	Duration
1.	English Language	30	30	Composite time of 1 Hour
2.	Numerical Ability	35	35	Composite time of 1 Hour
3.	Reasoning Ability	35	35	Composite time of 1 Hour
	Total	100	100	Composite time of 1 Hour

Mains Exam Pattern

The IBPO PO Main exam is also conducted online, it has 5(4+1) sections with a total score of 200+25 marks and total duration of 180+30 minutes. Just like IBPS PO 2017, IBPS will be conducting a descriptive paper in its mains exam for selection of candidates to the post of Probationary officer. The sections must be attempted in the same order and the allotted time as mandated at the time of the exam. A candidate has to clear both preliminary and mains examination to be eligible for the interview process.

SL.	Name of test(Objective>	No. of Questions	Maximum Marks	Duration
1.	Reasoning & Computer Aptitude	45	60	60 min
2.	English Language	35	40	40 min
3.	Data Analysis & Interpretation	35	60	45 min
4.	General Economy & Banking Awareness	40	40	35 min
5.	English Language (Letter Writing & Essay)	2	25	30 min
	Total	157	220	3 Hrs 30 min.

IBPS PO Interview

The candidates who have qualified the mains exam are called for a face to face interview which carries a maximum of 100 marks. The minimum qualifying marks in the interview is 40% (35% for SC/ST/OBC/PWD candidates).

The interview round is generally 15-20 minutes long, where a panel of bank officials ask questions to the candidates about themselves, banking sector, current affairs, general awareness, etc. The candidates must be well dressed, confident and carry all required documents to the interview.

The final merit list is prepared on the basis of marks obtained in mains examination and interview. The final scoreis calculated by IBPS with weightage of marks given to the main examination and interviewin the ratio of 80:20 respectively.

Penalty for Wrong Answers

There is a penalty for wrong answers marked in the Objective Tests of both Preliminary and Mains exams. A wrong answer to an objective question by the candidate will lead to a penalty of one fourth of the marks assigned to that question. For example, 0.25 marks will be deducted as penalty for wrong answer to a question that carries 1 mark. There will be no penalty for leaving a question blank, i.e. if no answer is marked by the candidate.

Final Score Calculation for IBPS PO Exam:

The final score for the IBPS PO exam is calculated keeping the following points in mind:

• 1. Marks obtained in the Preliminary Exam (Tier-1) will not be considered in the final score and are only for qualifying to Mains Exam (Tier-2).
• 2. Candidates must qualify Phase-2 and Interview separately to be eligible for final merit.
• 3. The weightage (ratio) of CWE Main exam and interview for final merit list will be 80:20 respectively.
• 4. The aggregate score out of 100 is used for the final merit list for each category.Candidates with top merit rank in each category are finally selected.