Cracking a banking job in India won’t be easy

Public sector banks are now introducing a third-layer to the hiring process to shun non-serious candidates. As per a recent report published in Economic Times suggests that Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) is making it trickier for candidates to get employed in public sector banks.

AS Bhattacharya, director and member-secretary of IBPS have said, “We are trying to get the right people for the right job. We also intend to arrest impersonation through a three-tier examination process." The new process will now include a preliminary exam before the entrance exam and interview. Scores from the preliminary exam will not be carried forward and over 55,000 banking job aspirants are likely to go through the three-phrase selection process this year.

For its 16,000 vacancies for probationary officer (PO) last year IBPS received a sum of 14 lakh applications, which did not included posts for the State Bank of India.

SBI, the country's largest lender, will be the first to hold the preliminary exam. The nationalized is planning to hire 2,000 probationary officers next year and the process will begin next week, a senior bank official said. SBI has mandated IBPS to conduct the exams.
Giving details of further hiring process Bhattacharya said, “The hiring of officers for 2016-17 will be done in October. The exam for clerical positions will be held in December.”

The ET report also suggested that banks excluding SBI are estimated to hire 20,000 officers and 30,000 clerks next year. For this financial year, IBPS has cleared the recruitment of 16,344 officers, 3,784 specialist officers and 30,683 clerks in state-run banks. Banks other than SBI had hired about 1.5 lakh candidates in the past three years.

About 1.22 crore candidates registered with the IBPS over the past three years only 86 lakh turned up to take the common test. During this period, over 99.5 lakh candidates signed up for employment with SBI and 66 lakh of them appeared for the exam.

IBPS also conducts exams for jobs in private banks, regional rural banks, cooperative banks and other financial institutions. It doesn't plan to introduce the three-phase system immediately for candidates aspiring to work with these entities.