The Hindu Business Line : ICICI Bank to hire 10,000 more this year

ICICI Bank is recruiting nearly 10,000 people this year. The bank will be adding almost half the workforce that it had as of March 2005. The new additions will take its headcount to about 25,000, almost thrice the size that the bank had three and a half years ago.

The banking sector in India is expected to see an increase of about 25,000 jobs this fiscal. The new additions by ICICI Bank alone would account for about 40 per cent of the banking sector recruitment this year. The bank had recruited about 8,000 people last fiscal.

Mr K. Ramkumar, Senior General Manager, Human Resources, ICICI Bank, said the sharp hike in headcount was driven by the bank's growth in the retail segment.

More recruits are needed to serve the fast growing small and medium enterprise, rural/agriculture, private banking and wealth management segments. There's also a concurrent need for technical, back-office operations and quality assurance personnel.

Mr Ramkumar said that 4,000 of the recruits would be freshers (2,500 MBAs from different management schools and about 1,500 graduates from various colleges). The balance would be lateral recruits at various levels in the organisation.

"Only some of them will be from other banks," said Mr Ramkumar. He pointed out, "The public sector bank workforce of around 7.5 lakh persons generally doesn't change jobs and prefers job security.

And the remaining one lakh in private sector is a limited supply pool for a growing banking sector. So, we have to go out and look at industries such as aviation and hospitality."

What is special about aviation and hospitality?

Mr Ramkumar, said, "We want employees with a service-orientation — someone who will not see customer queries as a headache, but as an opportunity to engage with them and provide solutions."