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SEBI Grade A 2018: Success Stories-1

April 10, 2019

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SEBI Grade A 2018 final interview results were out recently and ixamBee is happy to announce 20 selection for SEBI Grade A 2018 from ixamBee. This was the first year of ixamBee’s SEBI Grade A course and ixamBee is overwhelmed with the results. Being a SEBI Grade A aspiring candidate, getting guidance and preparation strategies from selected candidates will help you put your best foot while appearing for SEBI Grade A exam.

To make your preparation for SEBI Grade A exam smooth, ixamBee has brought to you success stories of students selected in SEBI Grade A 2018.

Let’s hear from Naveen Kumar (Selected in SEBI Grade A 2018)

Naveen Kumar completed Graduation in Computer Science) from BITS Pilani in 2013. He worked with CISCO and Amazon as a Software Engineer. He started his preparation for UPSC in 2016 and as he could not clear UPSC he searched for other alternatives and landed on SEBI Grade A exam and gained a place for himself in prestigious SEBI.

Let us know about Naveen’s journey from an aspiring candidate to a successful SEBI Grade A officer:

“I could not clear prelims of UPSC and was looking for an alternative and got to know about SEBI. As most of the syllabus for SEBI exam was common with UPSC, I thought to give it a try. I had tried for RBI and NABARD earlier but could not get through Prelims.

Even then I didn’t lose hope and made up my mind to give SEBI Grade A exam a shot. Having prepared for UPSC, NABARD and RBI exams, English, Reasoning, and Quant were my strong areas. Securities market, which comes in both Phase I and Phase II, was new to me so I concentrated more on Securities Markets.

For General Awareness (GA), I used to read Newspapers (mostly The Hindu), monthly capsules and get myself updated with all the current on goings. Because of all this, I scored very good in GA.

Time management plays a crucial role in Phase I exam and there you need to allocate time according to your strong and weak areas. You can divide your time in such a way that you attempt all questions with accuracy and speed. I advise to attempt GA first as it is the most scoring one you can allocate 10-12 minutes to GA section, Securities Market can be done in 10-15 minutes. Quant and Reasoning are time taking, therefore, keep them for the end and try to attempt at least 20 questions from each subject

Coming to Phase II, Securities Market was common in Phase I and Phase II so I prepared in Phase I itself. I referred ICSE free PDFs; current affairs, SEBI Circulars. You need regular practice to know the answers thoroughly.

For Finance and Management, I mostly referred to study material available online.

For ESI, I was not worried much because most of the syllabus overlapped with UPSC. I referred 4-5 months of current affairs.

For Descriptive English as well my UPSC preparations helped me here. Even in Descriptive English, time management plays a crucial here; avoid silly mistakes like spelling mistakes as marks are deducted for silly errors as well.

I started my Phase 2 preparation immediately after the Phase 1 exam without wasting even a second. I didn’t wait for the cut-off or anything, I just thought of Phase 2 at that time and nothing else.

Now it came to SEBI Grade A Interview:

The interview was the most dreadful part of my preparation. I just focused more on my profile to be confident to answer the question asked in my interview.

Some common HR questions asked to me during my interview are as follows :

Why SEBI?
What are your strengths and weakness?
What projects did u work on while in Amazon?
How can your profile help SEBI grow?

Some other general tips:

Time Management is vital, so try to allocate given time appropriately
Learn the art of skipping. Answer only those questions which you are confident about, rest just skip
Practice is key to success, therefore practice as many test series as possible.

I would like to share that ixamBee’s free test series help me a lot in preparing for Phase I and Phase II. I relied on ixamBee free mock tests for most of the sections and practice the test series daily. Even for general awareness, I referred ixamBee website and would compare with the notes I have prepared and would note down any additional information.

After I got selected in Phase II, ixamBee’s interview guidance session helped me a lot especially CP Sir’s tips and feedback increased my confidence.

Lastly, I wanted to say is that if you are preparing for UPSC, SEBI Grade A exam is a very good alternate career option as most of the syllabus is common.

Prepare for any exam with proper planning.”

Watch Naveen’s Interview here: