SBI Associate Bank Clerk Exam 2015 Pattern, Sample Papers & Books

How to prepare for SBI Associate Bank Clerk Exam 2015? This article provides you the tips along with all the prep materials - the Sample Papers & Prep Books along with a discussion on SBI Clerk Exam Pattern.

This blog post is written in sequel to my previous blog article: SBI Advertises for 6425 Clerks in its five Associate Banks: The Form & Notification. The focus of the blog post is on how to prepare for the SBI Clerk exam: It at first tells you what is the selection process/exam pattern of the exam and than goes on to give you the sources where you can find the online sample papers/mock test for SBI Clerk exam.

Selection process of SBI Clerk exam:
SBI clerical exam selection process consists of two stages:
1.0 Written test.
2.0 Interview.
Final merit list is decided on the basis of marks scored in above two stages taken together.

Pattern of SBI Clerk written exam:

Written exam for SBI Clerks consists of Objective type questions in following five papers:
1.0 General Awareness.
2.0 General English.
3.0 Quantitative Aptitude.
4.0 Reasoning Ability.
5.0 Marketing Aptitude / Computer Knowledge.

Each of the test sections has 40 questions, each question weighing 1 mark and this total 200 mark question paper SBI Clerk exam has to be answered in 2 Hours 15 Minutes.

There is negative marking: -0.25 mark for each wrong answers in these Objective tests.

You need to pass in each of the objective tests individually as well as score the minimum cut-off mark to be decided by SBI based on relative performance of all the candidates.

More detailed information about the written examination is available in the ‘Acquaint Yourself’ booklet, which you have to download from SBI recruitment website along with the call letter, scheduled to be made available form 7th January, 2015 onwards. How does this SBI Clerk exam ‘Acquaint Yourself’ booklet look like? You can have some idea by going through the booklet, which was released by SBI for the Clerical exam conducted on 27.05.2012 and 03.06.2012. Click here to download this SBI Clerk exam ‘Acquaint Yourself’ booklet.

How many candidates would be selected in this SBI Clerk exam?

There are a total of 6425 vacancies available in the SBI Clerical exam and three times this number will be called for interview subject to the candidates in each specific category scoring the minimum marks as given above. Thus you can expect very approximately 19 thousand candidates to be selected in the written test of SBI Clerical exam.

How can you be within these 19 thousand people? Read on..

SBI Clerk exam Papers:

Your first study material for the SBI Clerical exam should be the ‘Acquaint Yourself’ booklet as given above, which gives you some idea and kind of questions asked in the written exam.

Next prep materials should be the online papers available in various websites. Since you may be having limited time, I searched in the net to find these free online papers for the SBI Clerk exam. The findings are as follows:

Allinterview: It gives 130 model questions with answers.

Allexam: It gives 25 SBI Bank Clerk GK model questions with answers.

Upscportal: It gives you 20 Allahabad Bank model questions.

Upscportal: General Awareness sample Question Paper 2008: 40 Q

Edutalkindia: Numerical Ability/Maths samle Paper: 40 Q

SBI Clerk exam Prep Books:

While the above on-line Bank Clerical exam papers should be treated as eye-openers, you need to lay more emphasis on the preparatory books for the Bank Clerical exams. I found following list of books available on the net. The list below gives you the name of guide books for clerical exam of other banks too, apart from SBI Clerk exam. You can buy any of the books, as the clerical exam pattern is similar in all of the Public sector banks.

These books are available in most of the bookstores, but you can also order them online by clicking the links below, from Flipkart.com which offers huge discounts upto 38%, apart from free shipping/postage in India if the order exceeds Rs. 200/=. You can choose to pay through Credit Card/Debit Card/Internet Banking. You can also choose to pay through “Cash-on-Delivery” i.e. you pay in cash only when the same is delivered at your doorstep:

SBI Clerk exam Guide Books:
Ultimate Guide For Bank Clerk CWE/SBI Examination by Disha Experts Publisher: Disha
List Price: Rs. 325; Offer Price: Rs. 202; Discount: Rs. 123 (38%)

TMH Complete Study Package For SBI (Clerk Grade Exam) by Sanjeev Joon Publisher:TMH
List Price: Rs. 260; Offer Price: Rs. 208; Discount: Rs. 52 (20%)

SBI Clerk Staff Recruitment Exam by R. Gupta's Publisher: RPH
List Price: Rs. 265; Offer Price: Rs. 212; Discount: Rs. 53 (20%)

SBI Clerk exam Mock Tests/Practice Sets:
Target Clerk Exam SBI And s (10 Mock Tests) by Disha Experts Publisher: Disha
List Price: Rs. 260; Offer Price: Rs. 208; Discount: Rs. 52 (20%)
SBI State Bank Of India: Clerk Solved Papers & 20 Practice Sets by Arihant Publisher: Arihant
List Price: Rs. 175; Offer Price: Rs. 163; Discount: Rs. 12 (7%)


SBI Bank Clerk exam Prep Books in Hindi:
Lakshya Clerk Exam SBI And s (10 Practice Papers) (Hindi) By Disha Experts
List Price: Rs. 225; Offer Price: Rs. 191; Discount: Rs. 34 (15%)

TMH SBI CLERK GRADE EXAMINATION (Hindi) by Joon S Publisher:TMH
List Price: Rs. 295; Offer Price: Rs. 251; Discount: Rs. 44 (15%)

Ramesh Popular SBI Clerk Staff: Bharti Pariksha (Hindi) by R Gupta Publisher:RPH
List Price: Rs. 285; Offer Price: Rs. 143; Discount: Rs. 142 (50%)

Competition Master stated in its July 2008 issue that with every passing time, Bank Clerical exams have become tougher and therefore to have an edge over other candidates, may be you need to make your preparations based on the Bank PO exams. Some exhaustive blog posts were made on this blog on SBI PO exam and many wrote back to me, thanking and saying that the quality and amount of information in these posts were excellent and it helped them qualify for SBI PO exam. The links for these SBI PO exam preparation materials are as follows:
SBI Bank PO Exam Sample Papers, Books & Exam Pattern

With above, I am confident that you would be able to qualify in the SBI Clerical written exam. But how should you prepare for the Interview of the SBI Clerical written exam?

Prep material for Interview of SBI Clerk exam:

Lets see what SBI Clerk exam notification says (in page-1: Section-3:Emoluments) about the requirements from you:

“The new recruits must have flair for marketing and will be required to make customer calls and provide banking services, advisory services and cross sell products etc. inside and outside Bank premises. The duties involve extensive outdoor traveling. Depending upon requirement, there will be flexible working hours and working in shifts.”

For Interview, click here to visit this article, which tells you what are the requirements an interviewer looks for in you. It also gives you an interesting YouTube video telling you how you can also analyze an interviewer and hence be prepared for it. And than it gives you a list of 99 interview questions, which are most repeated in every other interview! These questions helps you prepare yourself.

You can also buy the following book for bank interview questions. This book can be found in most of the good books stores. But however, if you do not find them, you can order them online from Flipkart.com by clicking the links below.

Guide To Bank Interviews (2011-12) By M. B. Sivaramakrishnan
List Price: Rs.150; Offer Price: Rs.120; Discount: Rs. 30 (20%)

How To Face Bank Interviews? By N.S. Toor Publisher: Skylark
Cover Price: Rs.200; Offer Price: Rs.160; Discount: Rs.40/= (20%)

Hope this blog post answers your all questions on the SBI Clerk exam. I would post more info on this Bank Clerical Exam. So just keep visiting. Also, you are requested to put your questions as comments below, so that another among you can answer it, if not I.

Best wishes for the SBI Clerk exam!

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