[throwaway2203]

My friends who studied for the Pakistan Civil Service exam told me you can get questions like:

When did Gen Musharraf visit India on so-and-so trip?

A) Oct 10th 2004 B) Oct 8th 2004 ...

(I made the answers up, but I distinctly remember the days being 2 days apart)

[tdeck]

The Indian Railway exam has questions like this too. Here are some examples from previous years:

https://prepp.in/rrb-recruitment-exam/practice-papers

> 1. In Computers, what does ALU stand for?

> 5. BJP had won how many seats in the Lok Sabha election 2019?

> 20. In which of the following states of India is the Moatsu festival celebrated?

> 51. Who among the following was the first cricket player to win Arjun Award?

> 62. Which is the shortest part of small intestine?

I have heard that the only way to pass is to know someone who can give you the questions in advance.

[dxbydt]

> only way to pass is to know someone who can give you the questions in advance

RRB is remarkably transparent. You can download past papers going back two decades & study them. There are multiple youtube channels that solve all of these problems & tell you the strats explicitly. Current events & GK culture is a thing in India. Lots of common folk pride themselves on knowing the answers to these questions. I wouldn't consider this gatekeeping by any means.

[tdeck]

Presumably they don't repeat the same questions so I don't really see how the past question bank is so helpful when the possible subject matter is incredibly broad. That said apparently what I've heard is wrong and people do manage to pass these just by studying.

On the larger point, trivia is popular here in the US too but I would be amazed to see sports trivia questions on a government exam. It's hard to understand what the legitimate purpose of these questions could be for someone applying to be a train conductor.

Aside: In case anyone else wondered GK is apparently General Knowledge, it took me a while to find that initialism since I wasn't familiar with it.

[dxbydt]

> trivia is popular here in the US too

When you interview at Blackrock in SF, they walk you thru a bunch of rooms. Each room has a door. On each door is the name of a famous economist. When the interview begins, you have to recollect all of these economists and then drop some tidbits about each of them. You know, to signal that you are part of the in-group. Like, you can say hey wasn’t Krugman at Princeton when he got the Nobel but doesn’t he teach at cuny now because that’s where your phd advisor saw him last week hint hint. Now, would you rather do such obsequious ass-kissing, or remember that ALU stands for arithmetic logic unit ? Compared to Blackrock, Railway Board is god, son and holy ghost rolled into one.

[ywvcbk]

That seems pretty weird but at least you are expected to demonstrate that you have a genuine interest in the field outside some narrow specialization (or would talking about their actual work not count as “tidbits”?

The listed Indian train service exam questions just seem beyond absurd in comparison. If the questions were about random niche train related trivia it would make a whole lot more sense (of course still stupid..)

[tdeck]

That's an interesting fact but a weird take away. Of course you can always find an arguably worse candidate selection process.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

This is being discussed in the context of the Chinese test which required memorizing enormous numbers of facts. An example question for a train test requires knowing human anatomy to the degree of classifying individual organs.

I am failing to see how that is anything but blocking those who cannot dedicate themselves to the test.

[dxbydt]

There are more sailors than ships. In this context, something like 10000 applicants for a single rrb vacancy. You don’t want the railways to be nepotistic. Nor do you want legacy admits. Nor money power to dominate. What’s left ? Well, how about - leetcode has 6720 permutations. Find the 100th one by hand, when ranked alphabetically. One of my friends got this question last week at a bog standard Java IT job, in Bangalore, with over 1000 applicants. Its a fair question, just a little bit of math and arranging alphabets. Doesn’t mean he has to devote itself to handcomputing permutations for the entirety of his life. Its one day of interviews and you get to know if you are selected by 4pm same day. Perfectly fair imo. The standard gs interviews during my time took 12 separate rounds with 12 teams, were completely non-transparent, and you spent a whole month not knowing whether you are in or out. I would rather permute leetcode. Similarly, let the railway board applicant sweat a little. Its a government job for life with handsome pension to boot.

[ywvcbk]

> Similarly, let the railway board applicant sweat a little. Its a government job for life with handsome pension to boot.

So just have a general aptitude, “IQ style”(of course bot directly) test? Or better yet base your questions on things that are actually relevant to the job?

The purpose of tests like that is to select to people who have nothing better to do but waste their time learning pointless trivia. Seems extremely suboptimal..

[corimaith]

Or you could just set the test for the actual prerequisites, then run a lottery on those who pass to decide who to interview.

Statistically the individual's chances are the same, but you free up a not-insignificant amount of work and stress that could be spent on more productive areas.

[ywvcbk]

> I wouldn't consider this gatekeeping by any means.

Seems to be pretty absurd, though? Basing your hiring decisions on entirely pointless trivia? Looks like a good way to filter out candidates unwilling to demean themselves to such nonsense

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Is cheating rampant? I do not understand how a “test” like this can work where any irrelevant piece of trivia is fair game.