Daily Times

Sir: On April 21, I went through a terrible experience at the Sindh Public Service Commission. I had qualified a written test for the post of lecturer in commerce and the result was declared in May last year. First, there was a prolonged delay in conducting interviews of qualified candidates and it was postponed last month.

Finally, they called the candidates for interview and when I entered the interview room, two members of the commission were ready to interview me. I was rather surprised that I was passing through a process of indecipherable haste.

Generally, in every type of interview, a candidate is facilitated to introduce himself and express his areas of interest or concentration, and interviewers keep him engaged in conversation in order to get a picture of his mental make-up and skills.

That interview was conducted for the post of a lecturer in which the candidate has to demonstrate his communication and teaching skills, capabilities and general grasp of the subject.

No such effort was made on the part of the commission members to know from me the abilities required for the post except for a series of tricky questions. And in the process, no stone was left unturned to get rid of me as soon as possible.

Interestingly, both members were reading questions from their notebooks and confirming answers by their sly looks.

I had applied for the post on the basis of my MBA degree, which is a multidisciplinary course with a number of different specialisations. But the interviewers did not take any pains to ask me about my specialisation, the name of the institute, my know-how about the job, etc.

Instead, there was shocking haste in order to eliminate the basic and necessary component of a decent interview.

They were given the important responsibility of selecting and sorting out appropriate candidates for the job, but the blind methods they adopted meant they were not interested in such objectives.

Abdul Hameed Kashigar

Nasarpur