3 Days De Novo SSB Vs 5 Days SSB Interview

The Services Selection Board (SSB) is a body that evaluates candidates for officer positions in the Indian Armed Forces. The board assesses a candidate’s suitability for becoming an officer using a systematic examination method that includes personality, intellect, and interview exams. Written and practical task-based examinations are both available. An SSB is made up of a panel of assessors who are Indian Armed Forces officers with specialities such as Psychologist, GTO (Group Task Officer) and Interviewing Officer.

The psychologist may or may not be a veteran of the military forces. There are a total of thirteen Service Selection Boards in India, with four boards for the Indian Army, four boards for the Indian Air Force, and five boards for the Indian Navy. The SSB is a 5-day assessment process.

So The normal SSB interview process goes for 5 days, but the recent demands have been made to amend some policies and laws of the SSB Interview process, mainly to reduce its days of selection to 3 days instead of 5 days.

Many aspirants feel that there are a lot of scopes for amendments in the SSB interview process.

The existing Services Selection Board (SSB), in vogue since 1948, is a five-day-long process for officer selection which includes an interview, group testing and psychological testing of the aspirants.

The De Novo SSB is a 3-day interview [process. It will be introduced with some major amendments such as New techniques of behavioural testing will be introduced, with a deduction of human subjectivity and medical processes with more transparency.

Although, this De Novo is yet not implemented, and we are not sure when it will be implemented but until then let us understand both the 3 De Novo SSB and 5 Days SSB process and compare both in detail below!

5 Days SSB process

The current way of conducting an SSB interview is a 5 days selection process that goes through specified stages like screening, testing, psychological test, etc.

Let us understand this process bit by bit.

Day 1 – Screening

This includes candidates reporting to the railway station as mentioned in the call letter. Then the Officer Intelligence Rating(OIR) Tests followed by PPDT i.e Picture Perception and Description Test will take place. Later on, one by one group is called for discussion tests.

Day 2 – Psychology Test

The Psychology test compromises certain tests that have to be cleared by the candidates. The tests are as follows:-

1. Thematic Appreciation Test (TAT)
2. Word Association Test (WAT)
3. Situation Reaction Test
4. Self Description Test (SDT)
5. What my Parent’s Think About Me/ Parent’s Opinion
6. What my Teacher’s Think About Me/ Teacher’s Opinion
7. What my Friend’s Think About Me/ Friend’s Opinion
8. What I think about Myself/My strengths / Self Opinion
9. What I want to improve about myself/ Improvements needed in self/ Weaknesses

Day-3 And Day -4: Ground Testing Officer (GTO) Tests

The candidates are divided into groups based on their chest numbers, and each group completes the nine activities below under the observation of the assessor, the GTO. Six of these are usually done on day -3, and the rest on day -4. They are sometimes all held on the same day, with intervals in between. These activities are Group Discussions (GD), Group Planning Exercise (GPE), Group Obstacle Race / Snake Race, Progressive Ground Task (PGT), Half Group Task, Lecturette, Individual Obstacles, Command Task, and Final Group Task.

Personal Interview

The personal interview can be conducted on any of the three days depending on the slots and schedules. The Interviewing Officer based on data given by the student in his PIQ (Personal Information Questionnaire) asks the student various questions based on his family, academics, participation in sports and extracurricular activities, hobbies and interests, responsibilities, and general knowledge including about forces, personal life, etc. (Click Here: Personal Interview Questions)

Day 5 – Conference Day

It is the final day of the SSB interview process. In the conference room, all the assessors sit together and discuss whether a candidate is suitable to be recommended based on his performance in all the tasks and if there is a doubt they further question him during the conference.

Later on, the selection results are announced. So. overall the whole 5-day SSB interview process looks like this it goes through so many stages and a selection process.

Now, let us understand the De Novo process of 3 days which is being trailed by other SSB institutions.

3 De Novo SSB

Many speculations have been made about the De Nova SSB interview and when the new process will be available at various selection boards. Few boards, such as AFSB Mysore and SSB Bangalore, conduct De Nova trials and choose candidates based on these, while the majority of candidates go through the same 5-day SSB interview process. There is no indication of when the new De Nova procedure will fully take control.

If asked if they find the existing SSB interview system archaic and if they believe there is an unending opportunity to improve the current SSB interview system, many candidates may feel the same way. The present SSB interview system has been in use since 1948, with just minor modifications. The current SSB interview is a 5-day process in which a candidate’s personality is assessed using three distinct tests: psychology, GTO, and personal interview.

Why do we need the De Novo SSB process?

1. Time

To reduce the timings of the interview process, this new system of De Novo is required. The earlier interview process SSB interview takes 5 days time. But by his new system of SSB interview princess, the whole process can be cut short to just 3 days.

1. Access more candidates

More candidates can be accessed by reducing the timings of the SSB interview. This process will provide ease to the candidates as well as the officials as the results will be fast and transparent.

1. Testing through Current ideology

The SSB interview process will be adapted to the new technologies and ideas which will infer candidates selected on the basis of modern problems. This will be beneficial in terms of preparing the candidates for the newborn problems in the arena of national security.

1. Modern techniques of behavioural testing

Modern techniques of behavioural testing would be used which means that the candidates will be selected on more clarified and new techniques instead of the age old process followed in the 5 days SSB process.

1. Reduce the deficiency of officers in the Indian Army

The more the process will be fast, the more the candidates will be selected. This will definitely help in reducing the shortage of officials in the Indian Army.

What can be expected from the De Novo SSB process

1. As sai above as well, this process will reduce the number of days for the SSB interview. The interview process will end in 3 days instead of 5.
2. New techniques of behavioural testing will be implied in the interview process. It will help in bringing a dynamic change in the interview process.
3. It will minimise the timings taken in the long process of medicals, human scrutiny, and other processes that go along with SSB interview processes.
4. It will make the SSB interview process more convenient for the candidates as well as the officials. Overall, everyone will have convenience because of the fast process.
5. All the major three techniques will be modified according to the modern standards and based on hat interviews that will be taken.
6. Another aspect of this De Novo process will be that tests like screening and Psych could go online instead of an earlier offline process.

I hope, this article was helpful in clearing your doubts regarding the SSB interview process. Do tell us your queries in the comment section below. Jai Hind!