Service Preferences

Hello Friends,

I hope all of you are doing very well- padhai-wise, health-wise and other-wise too :). And those who wrote the prelims have cleared it and are now gearing-up into over-drive.I too have cleared the prelims and well basically trying to push myself to the limit, and soon push the limit too. :)

I guess you are in the process of filling the DAFs. The first-timers might be having quite a think about service preferences, so am posting my list from the first time i filled it (2010):

- IAS, IFS, IPS

- IRS Customs, IRS Income Tax [I joined IRS Customs in 2011].

- IAAS, IRTS, IIS, ITS, Post Service, 

- Railway Accounts, Defence Accounts, Civil Accounts, [based on size of organization from big to small]

- IDES, IP&TS, Railway Personnel, Railway Protection Force, Ordinance Factories, Corporate Law Service, 

- wrote 'NIL' across Group  B services indicating i wasnt interested in them.

Some people have asked me why i choose Customs over IT. My customs choice was a bit of a roller-coaster:

I put Customs over IT cause at that time, just going by the name of the service, 'Customs and Central Excise' seemed to offer greater variety of work. [Dumb reason i know :( ] Ofcourse after the results when i was sure that  i am getting customs everyone asked me why i chose Customs over IT, and then I agonised for a good 6 months. Then I went to Training and they did a good sales pitch of the service, so I was happy :). Now, I am settled happily.

So for you, info to consider would be:

- Customs does have a variety of work like Customs (anti-smuggling) and Narcotics- with investigation and police functions. We get arms training. 

- There are also some 8-10 posts called Customs Overseas Intelligence Network (COIN)- called COIN postings. We got a riveting talk on how the COIN officer in Dubai helped trace Dawood Ibrahim's money trail. 

- It also has the desk job kind of work available. So you can pick work profiles to suit you theoretically. :)

- Also all the indirect taxes are included and with GST, the indirect tax collections may in all probability exceed direct tax collections.

- Even at the starting level, if you have independent charge of an area, then you will have staff and infrastructure to do your work- which apparently is not always the case in IT. 

- In Customs you will mostly be placed in big cities. In IT initially you may have to spend time in smaller cities.

- You have 2 foreign attachments in IT training and only 1 (so far) in Customs. Some of the probationers moaned about this. But apparently IT always takes the lead in such things and Customs tries to keep up, so who knows by 2013 Customs may have caught up :)

- There are enough opportunities for foreign exposure- the Additional Director General of our tranining institute didnt tire of telling us that he had visited over 60 countries.
- One of my seniors said that IT has nuisance value- so social prestige is more, but there is more interesting work in Customs. 

 Ofcourse remember that I didnt hear how IT is better than Customs so this is a one-sided view if not biased.

So, fill in your service and state preferences very carefully and good luck for the next two months.

Cheerios
Spurthi