Any recruiter who complains of being inundated with job applications should thank their lucky stars they don’t work for Indian Railways, the world’s eighth largest employer.

The state-owned organisation boasts 1.4m employees and is about to embark on a mammoth recruitment drive as it looks to fill more than 18k vacancies for non-technical posts.

According to India.com, the selection process will include what is believed to be the world’s biggest online exam. The magnitude of the undertaking is underlined by candidates having a choice between 1,192 test centres throughout the sub-continent. 

The rest of the numbers are equally mind-boggling, including 703 commercial apprentice posts, 1,645 traffic apprentice posts, 7,591 vacancies for goods guards, and 5,942 assistant station master positions. Sadly, there is no mention of any plans to increase the number of recruiters.