IOB PO EXAM PATTERN AND PREPARATION

The Indian Overseas Bank is a reputed bank of the country. The exam for the probationary officer post is held every year by the bank. The PO Examination has two stages- a written test and a personal interview. The pattern of the written test is given below:

The written test consists of two parts: an objective test of 200 marks and a descriptive test of 100 marks. The descriptive paper is for qualifying purpose and the marks that are scored in it are not for merit ranking. In the objective paper the test for English is only for qualifying purpose.

The pattern of objective test is given below: Syllabus for the Exam-

Test name	Max. Marks	Time Duration
Reasoning	50	2 Hours
English language	40
Quantitative Aptitude	50
General Awareness (With reference to banking Industry )	40
Computer Knowledge	20

There will a penalty of 0.25 marks for every wrong answer.

The written test is followed by a personal interview, for the candidates who successfully clear the written test.

 Note : The number in the brackets against each subtopic denotes the number of questions asked in the year 2011 exam. na means not asked last year. In the computer sections questions are general and so no topic division is done.

The pattern has changed since.In 2012 there are 250 questions instead of 200 i.e each section had 50 questions. In 2013 the number of questions have been reduced in English section. general awareness section to 40.The questions in computer has been reduced to 40 and the marks allotted are 20.

The time allotted is also reduced to 120 minutes from 135 minutes.

1.Quantitative Aptitude:-

The main purpose of this section is to test candidates’ calculative speed and IQ. Normally it takes more time to solve this section than others, but you can save time in exam by practicing more on the following topics:

A) DATA INTERPRETATION(NA)

B) BAR GRAPHS(5)

C) PIE CHART(5)

D) SIMPLIFICATIONS(1)

E) PROBABILITY(na)

F) APPROXIMATIONS(na)

G) SERIES(5)

H) TABLE ANALYSIS(10)

I) PERCENTAGES(4)

J) EQUATIONS(7)

K) AVERAGES(2)

L) RATIO AND PROPORTIONS(1)

M) SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST(na)

N) STD(na)

O) TIME AND WORK(1)

P) MENSURATION(1)

Q) PROFIT AND LOSS(na)

R) SQUARES AND CUBES(2)

S) INDICES(2)

T) DIVISIBILITY TESTS.

U) FRACTIONS.(2)

In many bank exams data interpretation questions are not asked but here they are very important as almost 1/3  questions are from this topic. They generally come in sets of problems. Each set is based on either charts or tables or graphs

2.General awareness:

MARKET AWARENESS(2)

BANKING AWARENESS(12)

CURRENT AFFAIRS(1)

CONSTITUTIONAL AMMENDMENTS(na)

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS(5)

SPORTS(na)

NATIONAL BOARDS(8)

GOVERNMENT SCHEMES(1)

DEFENCE/ATOMIC ENERGY(na)

AWARDS(na)

BUDGETS(1)

BOOKS AND AUTHORS(2)

FAMOUS PERSONALITIES(2)

ECONOMY(12)

NOTE:

About 60% of the questions are from latest in banking world,economy and finance

3. Reasoning:-

Reasoning is undoubtedly one of the toughest parts of the paper and would require more time. The data sufficiency part would require vigorous practice.

A) DIRECTION SENSE PROBLEMS(7)

B) SITTING ARRANGEMENTS(6)

C) BLOOD RELATIONS(NA)

D) CODING AND DECODING(5)

E) ALPHANUMERIC SEQUENCE(na)

F) ALPHABETIC SEQUENCE(2)

G) RANKING(NA)

H) DATA SUFFICIENCY(10)

I) STATEMENT AND CONCLUSION(3)

J) ODD MAN OUT(3)

K) FIGURE SERIES(10)

The pictorial problems are significant in this section as they can be easily identified ad solved and also because they are  more in number.

4. English Language :-

The purpose of this section is to test candidates’ grammar, comprehensive and verbal skills .

a) Synonymous and antonyms(24

b) Paragraph completion(na)

c) Reading comprehension(15)

d) Re arrangement of sentences(5)

e) Correction of phrases or sentences(15)

f) Some questions are given where two sentences are given with blanks. One word is suitable   for both the blanks and option having that word has to be chosen.(10)

In verbal ability the questions are broadly divided into

1. Filling the blanks

Filling in the blanks using appropriate words from the given choices.

Here the basic usage of grammar is put to test.

2. Reading comprehension:

A passage is given and at the end of the passage a set of 4-5 questions is asked.

the questions asked are generally direct questions from the paragraph and

Synonymous and antonyms of the words from the passage.

3. Error detection in the phrases of the sentence.

They are generally asked in sets of 3-4 questions.

4. Arranging different shuffled sentences given to form a meaningful paragraph

The marks in the English section are for only qualifying, they will not be considered during ranking stage

5. Computer Knowledge:-

In this section half the number of questions are asked from the very basic computer knowledge (or) well known topics of computers and to solve the remaining questions concentrate on the following topics:

a) Computer Networking

b) Database concepts

c) Computer terminology and keyboard shortcuts

e) E-commerce and Latest technologies

f) Internet and computer Hardware

g) Operating system concepts

h) Concepts related to computer architecture

i)              System security and firewalls

The number of questions in this section is 40,but the marks allotted are 20.This means each correct answer gives ½ mark and every wrong answer will deduct ¼ mark.So only questions that you are comfortable should be answered.