The Hindu Business Line : Banking on marketing

This is with reference to ‘3.4 million apply for 11,000 clerical vacancies in SBI’ (Business Line, November 7). It is quite interesting that most of the clerical vacancies are in marketing and not in operations. While the new recruits “should have a flair for marketing, they will be required to make customer calls and cross-sell products”, it is perplexing as to how this can be found out through the objective tests comprising general awareness, general English, quantitative aptitude, reasoning ability, and computer knowledge.

These tests were there even when the Bank recruited clerical staff for day-to-day operations and desk-work.

Even marketing ability that has been incorporated in the new test cannot measure the marketing aptitude of the candidate. But being a public sector organisation, the SBI has no choice but to go for public recruitment.

In the process, the Bank is likely to end up with candidates who have done exceedingly well in these tests but may not have any aptitude for marketing. It will not be able to identify test-passed candidates for their marketing aptitude during the interview since it is of short duration and one-off event.

However, it is noteworthy that public sector banks are now realising the importance of the ‘marketing’ function and have relegated “operations and desk-work” to the background. In fact, the message should spread across the entire public sector banking industry which is quite poor in ‘marketing’ and good at ‘operations’.

Most of the PSBs are blessed with “walk-in deposits” and have become deposit collection centres.

K. V. Rao Bangalore