State Bank of India is set to expand its staff by ten per cent over the next one year. The bank is planning to add 20,000 personnel across both the officer and clerical cadres. As of June 2012, the bank had 2.14 lakh staff on its rolls.
A large portion of the new recruits will be required for the 1,200 new branches that it proposes to open this year. SBI is also recruiting to get ready for the impending retirements of its existing staff. Asked about this, A. Krishna Kumar, Managing Director and Group Executive (National Banking), said, “We estimate about 35-40 per cent of the SBI’s staff or about 70-80,000 people will be retiring in the next five years across all levels.”
Short on clerks
SBI proposes to recruit 19,000 clerks and 1,000 officers now. It had 80,329 officers and 95,018 clerks on its rolls in June. Asked about the higher number of clerks being recruited, Krishna Kumar said that this was being done to address the deficit in clerical staff in many branches.
He said that the interview process is currently going on for clerks while they will shortly be starting the process for recruiting probationary officers.
What about the attrition rate? Krishna Kumar said, “Of the newly recruited people at least about 10-15 per cent leaves in any case. That has been the experience in the last couple of years.”
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