Five Applicants, Three Conditions and a Screening Clerk Who Marked Everyone Eligible
A regional rural bank advertises five probationary officer vacancies and lays down three conditions, all to be satisfied as on 01.08.2024:
(i) a bachelor's degree with at least 60% marks, relaxed to 55% for SC/ST candidates; (ii) age between 21 and 30 years, with a relaxation of 3 years for OBC and 5 years for SC/ST candidates; (iii) at least two years' experience in a bank or financial institution, or a postgraduate degree in management with at least 60%.
The screening clerk has marked all five applicants eligible:
- A - General; born 12.03.1998; B.Com 62%; 18 months as a clerk in a bank; MBA 68%.
- B - OBC; born 05.09.1992; B.Sc 58%; six years with an NBFC.
- C - SC; born 20.06.1999; B.A. 56%; no work experience; M.A. 61%.
- D - General; born 30.07.1996; B.Tech 66%; three years with a software services company.
- E - OBC; born 15.01.1995; B.Com 61%; four years as a clerk in a co-operative bank.
He asks you to confirm the list before call letters go out.
1. Decide who is eligible, showing the criterion that each rejected applicant fails.
Read the worked answer
A - eligible. Age on 01.08.2024 = 26 years 4 months ✓ (21–30); 62% ≥ 60% for General ✓; experience is only 18 months, but condition (iii) is worded as an alternative - an MBA with 68% ≥ 60% satisfies it ✓.
B - not eligible. Age 31 years 10 months, within the OBC ceiling of 33 ✓; NBFC counts as a financial institution ✓; but 58% < 60%, and the 55% relaxation applies only to SC/ST ✗.
C - not eligible. Age 25 ✓; 56% clears the 55% SC relaxation ✓; but no work experience, and an M.A. is not a postgraduate degree in management ✗.
D - not eligible. Age 28 ✓; 66% ✓; three years in a software services company is not a bank or financial institution, and there is no management PG ✗.
E - eligible. Age 29 years 6 months ≤ 33 (OBC) ✓; 61% ≥ 60% ✓; a co-operative bank is a bank, so the four years count ✓.
Confirmed shortlist: A and E.
2. Management proposes a 2-percentage-point relaxation in the degree-marks condition for OBC candidates. Who else now qualifies, and does it change anyone already rejected?
Read the worked answer
Apply the relaxation only to OBC applicants and re-test the rejected candidates.
B: 58% + 2 = 60%, which meets the general 60% bar. Age (31 years 10 months ≤ 33) and experience (six years in an NBFC, which is a financial institution) were already satisfied. B becomes eligible.
C: an SC candidate, so an OBC-only relaxation does not reach him - and he fails condition (iii) independently. Still ineligible.
D: General category, unaffected, and still fails condition (iii). Still ineligible.
E: already eligible; the relaxation changes nothing for him.
Revised shortlist: A, B and E - three of the five vacancies filled. Note the compliance point: a relaxation of this kind must be notified before the cut-off date in an addendum to the advertisement. Applying it at the screening stage, after applications have closed, is open to challenge by General-category candidates and should be cleared by the bank's legal/HR vertical and minuted.
3. D argues that his three years at a payments-technology vendor serving banks should be counted as experience in a 'financial institution'. Decide and justify.
Read the worked answer
Reject the argument. Condition (iii) is institutional, not client-based: it asks where the candidate worked, not whom his employer served. A software services company is not a bank, and it is not an RBI-regulated financial institution such as an NBFC, co-operative bank or insurer. That its clients are banks does not convert the employer into one - otherwise any vendor to the financial sector, from stationery suppliers to cloud providers, would qualify. The criterion would lose all meaning.
D's only alternative route is the postgraduate degree in management with 60%, which he does not hold. He therefore fails condition (iii).
Process point: the rejection is defensible only if the advertisement defines or clearly implies 'financial institution'. The screening clerk should record the reason in writing and give D the standard rejection intimation; HR should be asked to publish a definition of the term for the next recruitment so that the same argument is not raised again after the cut-off. Relaxing the criterion now, for one candidate, would be both unfair to the other applicants and difficult to defend if challenged.