Reinventing the UPSC Interview Process Amid AI & Coaching Challenges
2025 is the Centenary Year of the formation of Union Public Service Commission, and a noteworthy change is the crucial role played by coaching, and now AI, in personality tests. The new challenge before UPSC is: how can it gain deeper insights into the candidates’ personalities that goes beyond tutoring provided by coaching institutes? Some ways include:
Giving messy, ambiguous scenarios where there isn’t a clear “right answer” to see how candidates work through uncertainty. Then, listen for how they reason and connect ideas. Don’t ask, ‘What do you know about X?’ Ask, ‘Walk me through how you’d handle this situation”.
Testing if the candidates are curious and capable of critical thinking by seeing how willing they are to ask questions and how well they identify gaps in information. Pose questions that are deliberately vague or missing key details and see if they recognize what’s missing, and if they ask for more information.
Shifting the discussion in an unexpected direction and seeing how candidates respond when the discussion goes off-script. If they’re smooth on familiar ground but stumble in unfamiliar territory, it shows that they will struggle to handle unexpected challenges.
In their responses to interview questions, some candidates will build on information given in coaching and refine their ideas, while others will simply parrot what they have been told. The Board can tell who’s thinking critically by the logic in their argument and how they connect the dots.
Now, candidates are starting to use AI tools to help them answer interview questions. The UPSC must rethink how they conduct interviews and focus on whether candidates have the human skills AI can’t replicate:
How well does the candidate read the room and respond to social cues?
How do they reason through complex ideas and connect information?
How do the candidate’s questions help move the conversation forward?
How do they respond when the discussion shifts in an unexpected direction?
How well does the candidate work with others and solve problems on the spot?
The common denominator in all these is to approach personality tests from different angles to gain deeper insights into the personality of candidates, much like how surveyors use angles from known points to find an unknown one.
This method can help gain deeper insights into candidates’ thought processes with the advent of assembly line coaching and widespread use of AI. The UPSC must constantly reinvent interview taking to stay ahead of tutoring and AI-driven responses. Otherwise, they will end up testing the capability of the coaching institutes and AI, not the candidates.
