IBPS PO Exam Pattern

The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection conducts common bank examination and interview for the recruitment of probationary officer (PO). The exam is conducted every year and thousands of aspirants appear for the exam. The IBPS PO recruitment process is categorized into various stages. The IBPS has made some changes for 2015 exam that are as follows:

See also IBPS Bank Sample Question Papers 

• From 2015, two online exams will be conducted for IBPS PO applicants.
• The first exam will be preliminary exam of 100 marks and the duration of the exam will be 1 hour.
• The second exam will be PO main exam, which will contain 200 questions and applicants are required to answer within 2 hour duration.
• There will be negative marking of 0.25 marks for each wrong answer.
• There will be no negative marking for a question that is not attempted.
• Only the test of English language will be available bilingual, including English and Hindi.
• The corrected scores acquired by the candidates in different sessions (if held) will be normalized using the equi-percentile method. Scores up to two decimal points will be calculated.
• The preliminary exam is the gateway to PO main examination.
• The candidates’ selection will be based on the results of the IBPS PO main examination and interview.
• The bank will send the selected candidates for two year probation right after the IBPS selection. Right from supervising probation period of candidates to giving relevant trainings and evaluating their performance, every activity will be undertaken by the respective banks.
• The candidates will be promoted as assistant manager after the completion of training. Based on their personal interest, the candidates will be appointed for different roles in the bank.

The syllabus for IBPS PO exam is as follows:
Preliminary Examination Syllabus – 1 hour time duration

Name of Tests	Number of Questions	Maximum Marks
English Language	30	30
Quantitative Aptitude	35	35
Reasoning Ability	35	35
Total	100	100

Main Examination Syllabus – 2 hours time duration

Name of Tests	Number of Questions	Maximum Marks
Reasoning	50	50
English Language	40	40
Quantitative Aptitude	50	50
General Awareness	40	40
Computer Knowledge	20	20
Total	200	200

The candidate appearing for the exam will be required to get a minimum score in each test. The minimum total score will be considered while short listing candidate for interview. Based on the number of vacancies, cutoffs will be decided and accordingly, candidates will be selected for interview. The scores of online exam will be declared after the completion of the interview process.