Candidates, who get screened in gets PIQ (Personal Information Questionnaire) form to fill up the required details. PIQ plays a crucial role in SSB selection. 90 percent of Personal interview depends on your PIQ. It is the key for your interview. Filling up PIQ in a right way depends on some factors. Some of the points, that every candidate must remember while filling PIQ, are mentioned below.
- Be genuine and honest – Whatever you mention in PIQ should be genuine and written in an honest way. Probing is done on the written matter. Bluffers are easily caught red-handed. So stay on your ground, don’t copy others and analyse yourself to make a clear image of yours in your mind to answers easily about yourself.
- PIQ shows social exposure – Your responsibilities, participations and diversity in activities shows your exposure to the real world. The more you had done, the more you had experience to tackle daily life situations.
- Be aware of whatever you write – Your information in PIQ will be asked in the interview to judge your selection. So you should stay aware of the matter you have written. Marks and percentage, special achievements, salaries of family members, position in sports and activities, etc. are to be remembered accurately as mentioned in the PIQ.
- Proof and examples of what you have written – Your experience shines in your PIQ form. For probing the genuineness of your experience, IO may put some questions to get the proof of your actual presence and handling of the situation. Your responsibilities shows your leadership. Interviewing officer can ask for some other examples of your responsibilities or any special incident while delivering responsibilities. Some other topic related questions, that are usually asked from PIQ are:
- Sports – Most interesting match, your captainship in a match, any conflict between players, etc. are some commonly asked questions by the IO
- Hobbies – Remember, don’t include any casually playing sports in this section. Time management for hobbies, why do you like doing this thing, how much have you done till now, etc. . . .Your hobbies are mostly asked in the personal interviews
- Responsibilities – Areas of responsibilities, reason behind choosing you for responsibilities, how did you managed the responsibility with other works etc.
- Extracurricular activities – Strategies and problems faced while preparing for the event, theme of the event, why only this event etc.
- Hobbies should be productive – Your hobbies and interests that you will mention in PIQ must be productive. Your hobbies must make you learn something. Normally, some common hobbies people have are repairing household things, reading magazines, gardening, article writing, etc… Be prepared for questions related to the hobbies. The question can also drive the interview to a critical point.
- Avoid cutting overwriting – Your PIQ is your resume for SSB. Take your time and fill it carefully. Your cutting and overwriting can make it look confusing. Write neat and clean, write correct thing at correct place and write what is necessary.
- Good PIQ is a recommendation letter – Always remember that a good PIQ is a recommendation letter of a candidate. SSB judges the future of a candidate by analysing his past. Your prior life events will make it easy to you to get into the tough life of the Armed Forces. So be careful and take it as your first step toward your recommendation.
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Conclusion – PIQ (Personal Information Questionnaire) is summary of main sections of your past. Make sure you point your achievements in the interview, no matter how small is it. But try to stay away from your negative points. It doesn’t mean that you have to hide them. But don’t mention them unless you are told to do so and don’t make a hype of it. Be honest, write clearly and communicate actively while answering in the interview.
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