Services selection boards interview are one of the toughest interviews in India. It is so, for a reason to filter candidates who are worthy to be officers. SSB interview is nothing but a series of personality tests. It assesses to find whether the candidates have it in them to lead men into battels without any specials incentives but a possibility of casuality or even death.
Those qualities are of an Army/Navy/Airforce officers, which in short known as OLQs(Officer Like Qualities).
There were totally 21 OLQs at the inception of SSB in after changes it has been brought down to 15. Those qualities are bifurcated into four factors, those are as shown below
Factor I: Planning and Organizing
1)Effective Intelligence
2)Reasoning Ability
3)Organizing Ability
4)Power of expression
Factor II: Social Adjustment
5)Social adaptability
6)Cooperation
7)Sense of responsibility
Factor III: Social effectiveness
8)Initiative
9)Self confidence
10)Speed of decision
11)Ability to influence group
12)Liveliness
Factor IV: Dynamic
13)Determination
14)Courage
15)Stamina
14)Courage
15)Stamina
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Lets briefly understand one after other; what each quality mean.
1)Effective Intelligence:
It is the capability of an person to solve practical daily problems; It is different from basic intelligence (which is measured in stage-1 as OIR tests).
2)Reasoning Ability:
It is the ability of a person to understand any situation and reason the cause and effects of it, with application of logic. In Hindi it is known as Tark shakti.
3)Organizing Ability:
As the name suggests, it is the capacity of a person to organize resources, problems, thoughts and ideas.
Just to explicitly mention here the resources could be any useful thing money, time, material and human resource.
4)Power of expression:
This is the most basic and important quality of a person. It is ability of the candidate to communicate his/her thoughts opinions and ideas effectively with ease.
This includes effectiveness in verbal, non-verbal and written communication.
5)Social adaptability:
It is the ability of a person to adapt to any situation, group or social environment very quickly. Adaptability will be well enhance with quick learning and reasoning ability.
6)Cooperation:
Cooperation is basically person's attitude towards collaboration and team work. It is how he reacts to difference in ideas and opinions for the collective cause. Anywhere in social scenario group goal comes first then comes individual ambition.
Dictionary meaning of cooperation: The action or process of working together to the same end.
7)Sense of responsibility:
It is the understanding and clarity in mind of a person in performing his/her roles well without reminder or no ones forceful instructions. Roles could be of a child, student, citizen and teammate etc.
8)Initiative:
Taking first step towards team/collective goal and sustaining the zeal until it is achieved.
9)Self confidence:
It is the faith in one's own abilities. (especially at unfamiliar situations)
10)Speed of decision:
As the name suggest; It is the ability of a person to come at workable decisions fast and accurate.
11)Ability to influence group:
As the name suggests It is the ability to make his/her followers to work/behave as intended.
As mentioned in the beginning of the blog; officers has lead men into battels without any specials incentives but a possibility of casuality. So the qualities mentioned so far, especially ability to influence group is essentially should be there in an officer.
12)Liveliness:
It is the capability off a person to be joyous and inspiring even if the situation get stressful. Optimism, clarity off thoughts and control over his/her emotions comes into play here.
13)Determination:
It is sticking to what he/she believes right; until the end.
In other words it is a sustained effort to achieve objectives in
sprite of obstacles and setbacks.
14)Courage:
It is capability of a person to appreciate and take well purposed (and calculated) risks. Courage has two forms to it (i)Moral courage: standing for what is right. and (ii)Physical courage: Standing for physical risks.
15)Stamina:
As all knows, It is capability of a person to withstand physical and mental stress. It includes both physical and mental endurance.
Assessors at SSB check for above qualities using different tools in various tasks/tests of Individual interview, GTO tasks and Psychological tests. Now the question is
As a candidate/defense aspirant, should you know about 15 OLQs?
The single and straight forward answer is NO. Some people say it is better to know OLQs, some coaching classes even guide aspirants wrongly to portray OLQs on purpose.
but remember, by just fake portrayal and mugging up officer like qualities you will not gain them. It takes time and effort to inculcates each qualities unless you have them as a part of your upbringing.
