SBI has been on a recruitment drive since quite some time. The bank is now on a hunt to pick up B-school talents to form a new pool of bank executives.

So far the bank was involved in recruitment for clerical and probationary officers (PO) posts. The bank increased the number of hires to as many as 25,000 recruitments this year.

Earlier only SBI Caps, the subsidiary of SBI was involved in hiring B-school pass outs. But the pressure of creating a new pool of professionals to carry forward the banking saga, the bank has taken the path towards B-schools.

The management graduates selected would be termed as executive trainees and they would be granted the scale II level. The batch will undergo further training. So far the POs selected had to wait for five years to get promoted to scale II level.

"We are trying to change the matrix this time and have recruited almost 480 officials nationally at the scale-II level," said a senior SBI official.

Postgraduates in economics, statistics or chartered financial analysts, chartered accountants and cost accountants have been sought for the position as eligible candidates.

"But that is merely the entry level and we selected people through several rounds of written tests, group discussions and interviews. The idea is to induct high-skilled officials, who will be groomed to become leaders in future," the official said.

Sources say that 60% of the total hires belong to the B-school category.

The basic pay for these executives will be Rs. 13, 820 as compared to Rs. 10,000 which is received by Probationary Officers.