Honestly, after looking into the nicl ao recruitment process this year, I kind of get why people think it’s not super fair. There’s this huge competition for just 266 seats, and the process has like three different stages: prelims, mains, and interviews. What I’ve found is that even really good candidates can get knocked out early just because of one tough slot or a tricky question set. I remember my cousin prepping literally night and day just to get through prelims, but she said it felt like luck mattered almost as much as hard work sometimes.

I also noticed that they’ve put specialists and generalists through similar hoops even though the jobs are really different. That part just seems weird to me. If you wanna find the right person for a specialist job, shouldn’t the process be more tailored? On top of that, there’s a long wait for results and not much info on what happens if you don’t make it through one stage.

So yeah, I’d say it feels kind of unnecessarily tough in places. It might be better if they made it more transparent and maybe split up the process depending on what kind of AO you wanna be. If you’re giving it a try, definitely stay motivated, but know that it’s not just about how hard you study, sometimes it’s about playing the system too.