The Hindu Business Line : Engg, management grads see clerical job as a ‘stopover’

Hyderabad, Nov. 15 Entrance exams for clerical vacancies in State Bank of India are under way. But the bank may perhaps have to start preparing a contingency plan for ‘attrition’ even before the recruitment tests are over!

That’s the impression one gets after talking to a good number of aspirants at various examination centres.

SBI had drawn a huge response with over 3.4 million applications for its 11,000 vacancies. But many see this as a kind of temporary choice — a brief halt or a stepping stone enroute to other goals. This is especially true in the case of large number of engineering and management graduates who took the test here on Sunday.

“I find this job the right choice for the time being as the job market is down due to a slowdown,” Mr S. Saptagiri, a B.Tech graduate, told Business Line minutes before entering the exam hall.

He had ‘no particular’ interest in joining as a bank clerk after paying hefty fees in a private engineering college.

Mr Ramakanth Bal, a management graduate from Orissa, thinks a bank clerk position is not ‘worthy’ of being flaunted in the social circle of his family. “In fact, my father is sad that I am writing this exam,” Mr Bal adds, hoping that by next year he would be back in the corporate sector where rewards are higher and linked to performance.

Ms Aparna, a graduate in information technology, has a bigger fear. “I am worried how to fit this into my CV after getting other jobs. Obviously, you don’t expect me to be a clerk for the rest of my life,” she quips.

Interestingly, out of about 45 aspirants with whom this correspondent spoke to, only 13 said they were keen on the clerical exam from their intermediate exam onwards. “My father always wanted me to get this job first and scale up to becoming a probationary officer by taking direct exam or CAIIB exams,” Mr M.B. Vasu, a B.Com graduate from CR Reddy College, Eluru, said.

Banks appear to have noticed that changing trend. “A simple look at the profile of the candidates shows that very few have a long-term interest in banking. Before the slowdown, we had a separate segment of people who were coming after much planning, especially from semi-urban and rural areas,” says a senior SBI official supervising the exam.

Once the economy revives, there is a greater chance of graduates from arts and commerce stream only taking these clerical tests in large numbers, he adds.

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