A legal profession needs an LL.B or equivalent education, a teacher needs to be a B.Ed, a software engineer will most probably be an engineering degree holder with coding skills. Can you similarly guess the right education for a banker? Should he be a B.Com or M.Com or MBA (Finance)? Most banks are happy to take anyone, as long as they are graduates. If you go around and check, you will find an unlikely mix of B.Techs (even M.Techs) & M.Scs, B.As, B.Coms, MBAs and even B.Pharms. But why do banks accept any graduation?
That is because none of the graduation or post-graduation courses anyway have much co-relation to the actual work in the bank. Banks assume that irrespective of educational background, they will have to train them up from near level zero. This is a sad commentary on our education system that it cannot even cater to the needs of a segment which hires amongst the highest number of white-collar workers annually.
With this quick background, here are our 5 reasons why you should join for an upskilling course in banking:
1. Assuming you are interested in a banking career and given that most banking jobs invariably come up in the retail private sector banks, how will you even come to know about a job vacancy in your city? You won’t find this listed either in newspapers or on job sites or even the bank’s career site. Most banks meet their local manpower needs locally. The branch staff reach across to their local connections to identify and then interview prospective candidates. Companies like BygC have the natural advantage of partnering multiple banks for their hire+train needs. Once you sign up with us, it is our job to provide you the openings, many times across multiple banks.
2. While it may not be easy for a prospective candidate to come to know about a job vacancy, it is not impossible. But assuming that you were lucky to come to know of a particular vacancy, why do you think you stand a better chance than your co-applicants? Do you have the work experience? Do you have any learned skills? Without any of these, you can still get selected if your work attitude and communication skills impresses the interviewer. Not impossible, but difficult.
3. Suppose you were both good enough and lucky to get through to this stage and finally get this job. Banks are great for a long-term career, but can be very challenging to settle down in the early phase. Employee attrition rate in the first six months after joining a retail bank is above 30%-40%. Actually, you may come across many such people in your neighbourhood who had this tough experience in private sector banks. Why is it challenging? Because of multiple reasons. Banking is a highly regulated industry because you deal with public’s money. The process flows both on the sales side and on the work side are hence quite detailed and even complex for a newbie. Because you are talking money to your customers, they are generally very careful and doubtful. Retail banking also deals in a huge array of products like CASA, various types of loans and advances like auto loan, home loan, loans against shares and securities etc., savings and investment products like fixed deposits, mutual funds, demat & trading accounts, insurance products like ULIP, term life plan, health insurance & home insurance, foreign exchange, lockers etc. To top it all, your business targets will start in maximum a month’s time, post-joining. No wonder that most newcomers find it a big struggle to just survive this challenging phase. While all banks will provide you some training, it is hardly going to be enough and therefore some amount of pre-skilling is not just recommended but mandatory for surviving this difficult phase in your career. There is a near 50% chance otherwise that you will be searching for a new job in less than six months.
4. Doing well in the job and not just surviving, is hopefully your objective when you start your new career. If you are amongst the top 2 quartiles of new employees, your worry then is to maximise the financial benefits due to you as performance incentives from the bank. Most banks provide very high incentives of up to 30-35k per month for their top performers. Invariably half of the employees would struggle to earn even 1 rupee of that eligible amount! And not more than the top 20% earn at least 50% of the eligible incentives. Try calculating the loss of income! Suppose you are eligible for 30k incentives per month and without any skill training, suppose you are able to earn 5k on an average per month. Basically, you are losing 25k per month which totals to 3 lacs in your first year!!
Why is that? Because you will spend much of your early period learning and getting trained in the various product features and process slows with almost no in-house training on the business-skills you need to maximise your earnings. This is BygC’s forte, given the huge experience of its founders and even the wonderful faculty in exactly those demanding business roles in some of the country’s best banks. This is also the reason why some of the country’s top banks including HDFC Bank have hired us to train even their existing employees who have been working with them for many years.
5. It is not just the loss of performance incentives that impact you, but the linked career growth opportunities in terms of grade promotion and role changes. It must be amply clear to you that the cumulative loss, impacts both your career and financial earnings significantly.
To summarise, by saving on a possible cost of around 35k that someone like BygC charges for its high impact course, you stand the risk of:
a. Not being aware of an appropriate job opportunity in a local bank in your area
b. Not knowing how to apply
c. Not doing well in the interview and not getting selected
d. Struggling in your early days to keep your job
e. Not earning any meaningful performance incentives
f. Not benefiting from career growth opportunities
Another way to look at this is to measure the benefits like a banker would do!
Your cost of training = ₹ 35,000 (approx.)
Your 1st year benefits = ₹ 300,000 (assumption basis point 4 above) That’s a whopping return of 857% on your investment of ₹ 35,000 in just year 1! Your career earnings are just too complex and huge to even talk about. Any rational person will not argue with that. Would you?
