Banks become hunting grounds for IT employees — for jobs, not money

Management graduates with 1-2 years of work experience are today being forced to compete with IT professionals, apart from slugging it out with fellow B-school pass-outs. The ongoing layoffs in IT industry has prompted professionals to hunt for jobs in arenas beyond core IT domain.

HR Experts say banks, which are increasingly investing in automation and IT-based skilled employees, will drive the next leg of employment for IT professionals. “We have IT sector professionals who want to make the switch to the banking sector and have been active on our platform to get the adequate skills for this purpose,” said Santanu Paul, Co-Founder & CEO, TalentSprint — a youth career accelerator platform.

Paul added that there is a demand for IT professionals across sectors since all of them are dependent on IT skills.

Nearly 30,000-35,000 jobs are on the line as factors such as cost pressures and new H-1B visa norms impact Indian IT industry. IT companies no longer want to up-skill their employees and those who have fallen short of expectations are being let go of, Paul said.

Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO of CIEL HR Services said that sectors like engineering, retail, e-commerce as well as banking are expected to increase their internal IT staff extensively. He added that individuals from the IT sector could go for mid- to senior leadership roles in these companies.

While this means more opportunity for IT employees, it is also increased competition for banking aspirants who come from across institutes and especially smaller towns.

In the State Bank of India probationary officers’ examination, almost 60 percent of applicants are understood to be from the engineering institutes. Traditionally, engineering students take up jobs in IT, financial technology or e-commerce companies.

A senior official at one of the country's mass market recruitment firm said that IT workers are primarily choosing banking as their first preference when it comes to a job application. "Based on the skill requirement of the banking sector, these IT employees are much more qualified than other graduates," the official added.

Overall, large-scale transactional jobs in the banking sector will be replaced by machines by 2020. It is anticipated that this would lead to loss of 1,00,000 to 2,00,000 jobs and these individuals will be replaced by youngsters who are adept at coding, data mining and data analytics.

Large public sector entities — like SBI hire officers through competitive examinations — look at skills that could complement the organisation’s needs. Human resource firms are of the view that IT sector staff are the best fit for these roles, considering that large banks like them are betting big on digital.