UPSC - Making & Breaking Careers

Being an aspirant myself and the recent twitter post from a failed aspirant, led to this article. Though many of my view points & issues are already covered by TVF's Aspirants?, still this article is focused on other side of the story.

Recently UPSC declared 2021 results. It created many success stories - flooded on our sm handles (youtube, instagram, linkedin, facebook, twitter), but there are also lakhs of other aspirants who 'failed'; atleast that's how society sees them. And worse still, that's how they will see themselves; for life!

UPSC makes 1000?#careers?a year. But it also destroys 100000 individuals (not only careers!) each year too.

One can sense the pain & hopelessness in a recent viral tweet by one such 'failed' aspirant. He put 10 best years of youth for an exam that IN THE EYES OF THE WORLD - will be 'considered a waste'!

I can vouch for it having been through this myself, a few years back.

MY FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE:

• Corporates do not want to 'touch' you (told bluntly in several of my interviews).
• UPSC, Government of India, etc. don't care.
• People, the internet, your family & friends will try to give you HOPE (if they have still not given up on you), but NO ONE will do anything to get you a job.
• Years of UPSC prep breaks you, but when it all ends in failure - it 'kills' you.
• You don't see any future for yourself.
• You are shattered, AND on your own!

Sad, but true. We as a society are individualistic like that. So what I learned so far, when its time, you have to be strong enough to take a decision like:

• When to halt your preparation atleast for a time being
• When to quit
• When to focus on alternate career options

I started my preparation in the year 2013:

• Appeared for UPSC Mains 2014
• Appeared for RPSC Interview 2015
• Appeared for UPSC Mains 2015
• Appeared for UPSC Mains 2016

After 3 Mains and 1 State Interview, and no backup plan, except hope and condolences from family and friends, I didn't had anything.

• NO CAREER
• NO FUTURE

TOOK A HARSH DECISION TO QUIT PREPRATION

and started looking for jobs, no previous job experience and huge employment gap, led me to the interview rejections even at executive level jobs, who has the capability to manage entire district if got cleared can not even get an executive job:

THIS SHOWS THE HUGE SKILL GAP REQUIRED IN MANAGING AN ENTIRE DISTRICT VS MANAGING A DEPARTMENT OF FEW EMPLOYEES

The TRUTH is UPSC aspirants are one of the most hardworking people I know, with zeal to learn & toil. They would make great corporate resources anyday; if only corporates didn't play 'untouchables' with them!

No other way to start my career, took some freelancing projects and started my entrepreneurial journey with currentaffairsonly.com - crisp & smart CA notes for aspirants as I was aware of the various pain points, one thing led to another started another venture callled edfinite.in - skill development platform for under graduate students in the non-tech domain. Edfinite was even recognized as among the top-75 startups of Rajasthan in 2019. 2020 pandemic, had to shutdown....started my corporate journey with CIIE (IIM Ahmedabad), presently I am working as Marketing Manager at India's leading unified logistics platform provider Axestrack Software Solutions.

I can honestly admit - some of my 'failed' UPSC peers were way better than some I met in Corporate world working at senior positions - in smarts, work ethics, as human beings ... you name it!

But the 'aspirants' will always remain a 'failure'. Their only fault - they ran a different rat race; the one that produces WAY MORE 'failures' than 'successes'!

If given the chance any corporate will be lucky to have them!

Via this article I want to make 4 requests to the Stakeholders:

1. Aspirants: Don't give this exam more than 4 years (or 3 attempts) of your life. Trust me, UPSC is not worth more than that. Don't get trapped in this quicksand; It's OK to quit. Have a Plan B. Move on! (Parents please don't force your dreams on kids. Society stop glorifying UPSC &?#IAS).
2. Corporates: Give these 'failed' talent a chance. They will pleasantly surprise you.
3. UPSC/Government of India: Don't 'kill' top talent of the nation like that. Have arrangements where the people who miss by a whisker get accommodated in some other 'appropriate caliber' jobs. Explore tie-ups with PSUs, Universities, Corporates, Social Sector players, etc. to help prevent such top talents from getting 'wasted'.
4. Skill Development Centers: Skill courses for govt. job aspirants to start their second innings.

As a society, we REALLY need to get some sanity in this race-of-madness, called UPSC Civil Service Examination.