My Strategy To Crack IBPS SO IT Officer: Aditya Singh

IBPS SO Success Story – Aditya Singh

My name is Aditya Singh and I am currently working at Punjab National Bank as an IT Officer. I am sharing my success story about my journey to become an IT officer. I must say the journey has been a bumpy ride and trust me, entering this cut throat competition arena is a task of its kind. I am penning my success story for all the exam aspirants with a hope that it will help them to plan out their strategy to prepare for the exam.

Coming down to my preparation, I started my preparation back in August 2015. I took many exams such as:

• NABARD- Couldn’t clear interview round
• SBI CLERK- Cleared
• SBI PO- Couldn’t clear Main Exam
• LIC AAO- Couldn’t clear but learnt the trend of GA questions- an eye-opener for me
• RBI GRADE B – Couldn’t clear Main Exam
• IBPS PO- Cleared but did not join
• IBPS IT OFFICER- Eventually selected as IT Officer in Punjab National Bank

Here is the section-wise strategy that I used for my IBPS IT Officer exam

1) Quant: 

This section was my forte, being a science student, and I focused on scoring maximum marks in it.  I kept on practicing questions from the book by R.S. Agarwal (completed it thrice). I did not want to lose marks in this section so I repeatedly practiced all the questions by myself and solved all the practice questions available at the end of the chapter.

2) Reasoning:

This section became stronger and better with practice but puzzle was the catch every time. One thing I observed is if you solve all the puzzles on a given exam day, you could easily sail through any exam. So in reasoning, practice is the key. The more you practice, the more you gain confidence.

3) English Language:

I really didn’t bother much for this section, this being my comfort zone. But for those who are worried about how to prepare English, I have only one suggestion- read ‘The Hindu’ newspaper. It works like a miracle (at least it did for me). Unlike other newspapers, in “The Hindu”, the context and writing style is strictly as per the exam trend and even acts as a GA/GK booster. If you read it regularly and slowly you will get a hang of it, and then understanding and making sense of articles will be a piece of cake. It takes time to read but once done, you are through for the day and sub-consciously your mind registers those words’ usage, GK topics etc.

4) General Awareness:

It went from being my weakest section to my strongest, all due to the LIC AAO exam which opened my eyes to the “anything and everything can be asked” trend. Read the daily GA updates from all the sources available on internet. Follow all the updates religiously, and you will soon be a master of GA.

5) Professional Knowledge:

Needless to say, it is the most important section of the exam. The three most important topics in this section are: Operating System, DBMS (Database Management System) and Networking. You need to read these three topics thoroughly from the following books:

DBMS: Fundamentals of Database Systems by Elmasri & Nawathe

Operating System: Operating System Concepts by Avi Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin and Greg Gagne

Networking: Data communications and networking by Behrouz A Forouzan

Among these three topics, DBMS is the most important one. 60-70% of the total number of questions were asked from this single topic in the exam. I would suggest attempting as many questions from Professional Knowledge section as possible from all possible sources.

One more thing I’d like to point out, that unlike GATE, where numerical questions are often asked, in the Professional Knowledge section of IBPS SO (IT), most number of questions will be theoretical questions. That’s why it’s important that you are thorough with the theory topics. No need to break your head on practicing a lot of numerical questions. 

Also try to avoid negative marking, attempt those questions whose answers you are sure of.

6) General Advice:

I would like to advice all aspirants to shift to an online mode of study from the conventional ‘pen & paper’ mode , which is what I did, because the level of questions have increased and you need to adjust for the same.

Refer various websites, solve mock tests and analyze them (analysis is the most important part). Follow this as a ritual and you will surely sail through. One more thing I would like to mention: Identify 3 sections and then work on making those 3 sections strong. At the end everyone works hard, but working hard in the right direction is the need of the hour.

 

I would like to thank all my well wishers who helped me in any way in this journey and also to the Oliveboard team for their constant motivation and updated study material in the form of mock tests, sectional tests and topic tests. You people made my journey much easier I am truly indebted to Oliveboard team as Oliveboard was my online class for a year and I have solved almost all the questions over there. The team is very cooperative too and they are always around to help you in case you have any queries. So keep up the good work Oliveboard!

Lastly, there might be times you feel low, but never ever give up because it is a tried and tested fact that those who have never given up have reached places. So buckle up guys and grab job opportunities that are ample. Identify your weakness and work on it, and sooner or later, you would be writing a success story just like me.

Wish you all the very best..

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