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N.S.Vageesh

CHENNAI, Feb. 19

IT'S recruitment season in the banking sector. A number of public sector banks have been inviting applications for the posts of probationary officers and some of them have completed the exam process.

State Bank of India is filling up vacancies of 400 probationary officers and 54 specialist officers. Specialist officer positions at most banks include recruitments for law officers, economists, computer professionals, security officers and financial analysts.

Canara Bank is going through the process of filling up 275 probationary officers post.

Oriental Bank has completed the examination process to pick up around 200 officers.

Allahabad Bank has said that it will be filling up around 400 vacancies while UCO Bank would be filling up about 250 vacancies shortly.

Bank of Maharashtra has advertised for around 150 vacancies.

Bank officials say that about 20 per cent of the total vacancies are filled up through direct recruitments while the balance is filled up through internal promotions. Pay and emoluments at the Scale-I entry level come to nearly Rs 11,000 for nationalised banks, while for State Bank of India, it is higher at Rs 12,740. The difference in pay, apart from liberal medical allowances and pension offered in State Bank of India often manages to draw away even those who have been recruited as Probationary Officers by other banks.

What is different about the recruitment process now is that banks are advertising directly for their vacancies. Earlier they used the Banking Service Recruitment Board (BSRB). Banks in a region would place an indent with the regional BSRB for filling up vacancies and the examination process would be conducted by BSRB on behalf of a couple of banks at periodical intervals. The applicants would not, however, know as to which bank they might be allotted if they qualified.

Now that uncertainty is gone. Officials in HR departments in banks say that this will now enable banks to be more choosy and will also engender a certain degree of organizational loyalty among new entrants from the very beginning.

The initial response from job applicants seems to be rousing. Oriental Bank had nearly one lakh applicants for two hundred posts while for Canara Bank the number touched 2 lakh. Bank officials say that 20 to 30 per cent of the candidates are women.

Mr.D.P.Sarda, Director, Institute of Banking Personnel Selection, which conducts and rates the written examination (comprising objective and descriptive parts) on behalf of these banks, says that they forward the list of successful candidates to the banks in the order of ranking.

The banks usually prefer to have for interviews anything from 3 to 4 times the number of vacancies advertised, and then make the final selection.

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