Armed forces offer very exciting career to young
men and women in several fields. Career in the
forces, in addition as a career, is also an
adventure in itself. To ensure that appropriate
candidates are chosen, a comprehensive selection
process is adopted by the armed forces through
Service Selection Board (SSB) interview. This
system of selection is based on the "trait
theory" of leadership which assumes that
every leader must have some specific and pre-determined
leadership traits. It also presumes that such
traits can be acquired by a candidate with the
passage of time meaning thereby that a person
once rejected in an SSB interview is likely
to succeed if he acquires some of the traits
with the passqage of time. The present system
of selection, although is long and takes four
to five days, is thus based on an objective
assessment of each candidate in which the qualities
like initiative, alertness, judgement, courage,
physical fitness endurance, cooperation, group
planning, decisiveness, knowledge, etc. are
judged. In addition, psychological and mental
robustness of the candidate vis-a-vis requirements
of the Armed Forces is judged and finally an
overall assessment of the personality of a candidate
is made by way of an exhaustive personal interview.