Upcoming career opportunities in banks

Financial awareness: Banking and finance are closely related. This section will have questions related to national and global economy, financial institutions, corporate world, stock market etc. To prepare for this section you have to focus on concepts as well as financial data. For example you need to know what inflation is and what has been the inflation rate recently. You may refer to one or more financial newspaper to prepare well.

Banking awareness: This particular section will have questions from banking world relating to different types of banks (public, private, cooperative, payment, develop-ment, small), banking regulator, basic /generic banking products and services, purpose of bank nationalization, bank mergers, issues and challenges before banks, government schemes implemented through banks, Micro, Small and Medium enterprises, ban assurance, monetary policy etc.

Government policy announcements ,financial inclusion, financial literacy, role of NABARD/SIDBI etc. Visit Reserve Bank of India website to obtain valuable input about most of the above.

English / Hindi language: There are many similarities in the pattern of questions in language papers. One set of questions may be based on comprehension passage. You have to read the passage carefully and then answer the questions according to what is stated in the passage which may be different from general opinion and observations. Some of the questions may be in negative form. (e.g. according to the passage which is not the right solution for.

In sentence based questions a sentence will be divided in four parts and you'll be required to find if there is any mistake in a particular part. If there are no mistakes, you've to mark your answer accordingly. Where jumbled sentences of a paragraph are given the candidate has to find the correct order. In another type of question a statement will be made and you have to choose from options the statement which matches with the idea. Questions where you've to provide correct antonym/synonym , may also be there along with questions relating to idioms and phrases. Fill in the blanks from given options may also need to be attempted.

For officers, in the main examination there is a section of Subjective English of 25 marks in which there would be two questions - one of essay writing and other of letter writing. It would be better if you choose few themes to practice for this section. Review the letter and essay written by you to see where improvements are needed. Also show these a couple of other people who can give you constructive feedback. Go through sample essays and letters in a good book on General English.

Start reading national newspapers, magazines, if you're not already in habit of this. There will be some new words. Find out their meaning and see how these words have been used. You may also explore synonyms and antonyms of these words. Your mind should also be on sentence formation and on sequencing of the statements in case of long sentences.

Increasing your knowledge of English by learning new words will help you. Every day choose 5-10 unfamiliar words from dictionary or other sources write their meanings and refer to these whenever you get time. In this way, you may teach lot many new words.For RRBs, candidates have option to choose either Hindi or English in the main examination.

Computer knowledge: This test has been added a few years ago. Today's banking widely uses computer applications and programmes. As such candidates joining banks are expected to have at least some affinity with computers. Questions under this section may relate to hardware basics (input, output, storage devices ), Windows programme (MS Office etc.) features, software and desktop applications, keyboard shortcuts, internet, intranet, networking, database, cyber security etc.

You may have practical knowledge of computers and internet which of course would help. However you need to make additional preparation for which you should refer to glossary of Windows, internet and computer applications etc. Learn about shortcut keys. Also it's advisable to go through Help/Support page of Windows.

This computer test is not to check your technical expertise, rather your awareness about basic computer usage is judged.

Data Interpretation: In this section usually a situation full of data is given. The candidate is required to read the situation closely and then answer all the questions related to it. For one situation there may be 2 to 10 questions.

Here the biggest challenge is to read and understand the situation right. Then the possibility of giving correct answer increases. The situation may be in form of text, tables, pie charts, bar graphs, line graphs etc. So you should be ready to see questions from multiple forms of situations. (Concluded)