SBI looks to fill 18,000 jobs! From officers, to clerical roles and gender diversity — here's all you need to know

The country's largest public sector lender, the State Bank of India (SBI), is looking to fill 18,000 jobs including officers, clerks and junior associates, in order to boost operations and enhance services across the country, PTI reported on October 26.

According to the report, SBI recruited 505 Probationary Officers in June and is filling more vacancies, with plans to hire as many as 3,500 officers this fiscal. There is also a target of 30 per cent women workforce over the next five years period, it added.

SBI hiring for officer roles: Here's what we know

• Kishore Kumar Poludasu, SBI Deputy Managing Director (HR) & Chief Development Officer (CDO) told PTI that the lender recruited 505 Probationary Officers (POs) in June.
• “The process to fill a similar number of vacancies is on... applications have been received,” Poludasu added.
• Advertisements for the 541 PO vacancies has been pushed, with applications already received, as per the report.
• The recruitment for POs is through a three-stage process: preliminaries, mains, and a psychometric test and interviews, it added.
• The bank plans to hire around 3,500 officers across the country in order to bolster its operations and enhance service delivery.
• Further, for the specialist officers roles, he added that around 1,300 odd staff have already been selected to look after the IT and cybersecurity space.
• Poludasu also said that “around 3,000 circle-based officers are now being considered. This should get concluded in the current financial year”.

SBI to hire 18,000 total jobs, increase female workforce to 30%: Details

SBI Chairman CS Setty had earlier this year stated that the lender would recruit for a total of 18,000 roles across categories, including 13,500 in clerical and the remaining to be probationary officers and locally based officers, as per the report.

Post that announcement, in Q1 of this fiscal, SBI announced the recruitment of 13,455 junior associates and 505 POs to enhance the customer experience at its local branches in India. Notably, SBI employs over 2.4 lakh workers, among the highest in the country and the highest in the banking industry.

Poludasu told the agency that one is also to boost gender diversity, with aim to increase SBI's women workforce to 30 per cent within five years.

“If we talk about frontline staff, women are almost 33 per cent, but as a total, if you see, they account for 27 per cent of the total workforce. So, we will be working towards improving this percentage so that the diversity gets further improved. The bank is taking measures to bridge the gap and achieve its medium-term goal of 30 per cent women in its workforce,” he said.

Highlighting some of the women-centric measures undertaken by the bank, Poludasu said the bank provides creche allowance for working mothers, runs a family connect programme, and offers training programmes to assist women employees returning from maternity, sabbatical, or extended sick leave.

In addition, he said, ‘Empower Her’ is a flagship initiative to identify, mentor and groom women for leadership through structured leadership labs and coaching sessions to increase female representation in leadership roles and build a strong pipeline of future top women executives.

(With inputs from PTI)