Got Recommended For Armed Forces For The 5th Time

Warm greetings friends! My name is VIVEK SURAJ and I am writing this article with a hope that my experience at SSB would help few.

Being a “ fauzi brat “ it was always my aspiration to serve in armed forces but was not that serious till my last year of college. My journey started when I attended campus interview for UES NAVY entry in Oct 2015. I took guidance from my brother and started preparing from book and through internet. I wanted to have utmost confidence so joined a coaching academy in Delhi which helped me a lot to know myself more. Few of my friends have great participation in my success specially VIVEK GAUR and VIKAS KUMAR with whom I use to practice a lot. We used to utilize the leisure time in college For GD, practicing psychological test and mock interviews.

After all these I attended total of 9 SSB’s –

TGC 123 : Screened out, Bangalore ( Feb 16 )
UES NAVY ( PILOT ) : Recommended, Bangalore but medically unfit
SSC TECH 47 : Conference out, Bangalore
AFCAT : Conference out, Mysore
TGC 124 : Screened out, Allahabad
SSC TECH 48: Recommended, Allahabad
NAVY GSX : Recommended, Bhopal
NCC SPL ENTRY 41 : Recommended, Bangalore
TGC 125 : Recommended, Bhopal ( Feb 17 )

First of all it is very important to understand what really SSB is.

It is a battery of tests process through which personality of a person is judged. So there is no chance for someone to fake or to pretend to be someone else. The only thing which will help you out is to know yourself best and work on your personality.

Few things will surely help, if you acquire them in your daily schedule –

Get out of your comfort zone. Start working on areas where you lack. Work on your GK, good knowledge always boost confidence. Be a early riser work on your fitness. Try To be calm and composed whenever you are handling a stressful work.
Develop habit of reading. Reading newspaper and novel provides knowledge as well as awareness. Novels of Robin sharma are best to start with, it guides in developing good personality and increases creativity also.
Have best people around you. Friends having same ambition would be better. Give yourself some alone time to scan your day like what all activities you did, how did you utilize your spare time, how was your behaviour with others and evaluate it.
Inculcate new hobbies not just to fill PIQ but to be more productive. It may be reading, yoga, meditation running etc but should be a productive one. Once you start enjoying your hobbies you won’t even know when it got into your daily routine.

These things will help to build good personality, but it is also critically important how you project yourself during SSB. First thing, try to avoid taking guidance from others everytime. It will confuse you more and stop your creativity and you will lose originality of yours. So don’t mess up in your early attempts and realising it later.

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Things which may help:

Psychology test-

WAT: never attempt this test with certain themes in your mind. Observe the picture carefully such as emotions, wearings, background and activity and then create a suitable situation involving all these.
It is not necessary that there should be some problem in the story it can be anything like get-together, celebration trip etc what I mean is to make what you see first.
Creating best themes is not important but a simple story with more logical approach and a practicle solution would be better.
never avoid anything in the picture it is been kept only to check how you accept the problem and make a story related to it.
Try to show behaviour and character of the hero through his activities and not by mentioning words.
Show the emotions of the characters towards other people in story which many never do.
WAT: You can practice it through apps with time.
Frame your sentences and write it down, but it must be your own thought and observation.
SRT: restrict your responses to maximum 1.5 lines.
SD: Prepare it prior to SSB. It need deep thinking to write about yourself, so it will save your time. Be truthful and also mention your weaknesses based on your quality traits so that accessor will scale you on those basis.

INTERVIEW:

Interviewer gets to know about you very well. Things which I have already mentioned earlier in the article will give an good impact on interviewer that you really work on your personality. specially for repeaters he seek for the changes a person has brought in his life.

Go prepared with those so called rapid round questions which consist of your academics, your lifestyle, family, work, hobbies and co curricular activities.
Get an good idea what went wrong in your previous attempts.
Be cool and calm through out the interview don’t put yourself in unnecessary stress by thinking what interview is thinking about you through your replies.
Be concise and give to the point replies, beating around the bush will not help you.
Taking stands on your views is good but you must understand sometimes he contradicts your point to let you know that you are wrong on your side so you must accept your fault if you feel he is making more sense.
Know yourself well, self awareness will surely impress him.

GTO TASKS –

Good GK and awareness will give you a upper hand.
Take active participation in GD not bothering how many times you have spoken but more listening.
Appreciate others ideas if you find logical.
Help others to put their point but only when they are struggling to get an chance and it should be a genuine one.
If you find yourself confident in PGT then don’t hesitate to come up, being closer to the structure will help you to understand the problem more.
Always ask your groupmates before implementing any idea in PGT. It will build good relation with other.
If GTO scolds your team for some cause, make sure you don’t repeat such mistakes further.
Perform all tasks with same enthusiasm and complement your teammates after completion of each task rather than discussing the mistakes.
GTO task will be a cake walk only if u stop considering it as competition.

SSB will get easy only if you start enjoying the process of building your personality. One last thing “don’t give up on your dream if you think you can make it, respect your time zone sometimes it tests your perseverance! “ . With this I am signing off and going to join OFFICERS TRAINING ACADEMY through SSC TECH 48 in April and will also look for TGC 125 merit list.

Good luck to all defence aspirant! JAI HIND!