Company Profile
Business: Banking, Finance, Insurance, Asset Management, Home Loans, Venture Capital, Asset Management
Corporate office: Mumbai (and other cites for different JVs)
No. of companies: 7 major ones including ICICI Bank, the parent firm International
Presence: 18 major countries
Biggest group company: ICICI Bank
Employment strength: 80,000+
Revenue: (Mar 2011): Rs 32,369 (Only for ICICI Bank)
Average number of campus recruitment: 3,500
Total number recruitments annually: Over 20,000 every year
Number of colleges listed on the panel: 250 (includes ICAI, Management Schools, Agri Colleges, and Law Schools)
“KNOWLEDGE is the hygiene factor. But does the person
have the passion to perform? Is the person a team player? These are
attributes we look for. It is about personality”. That's what Chanda
Kochhar, CEO of ICICI Bank seeks when she hires a person. And it matters
a lot since ICICI has always been driven by passion to grow. With at
least seven subsidiaries and JVs the bank is a financial behemoth and
would employ over one lakh individuals by the end of the next financial
year. It has openings for a range of positions from front office to the
corner room and even for people with limited competency in English
language as Saurbh Singh, Senior General Manager says. But all said and
done, passion is the prime criterion.
Finance is a relationship-intensive business function and demands very good people-centric
Human Resources. With an attrition rate of over 20% in the
BFSI sector, recruitment happens throughout the year. Read on to find how to get in and stay on.
On Campus Hiring
The company with its diverse interests does not restrict itself to
Charted Accountants and
fresh MBAs,
though they do form a sizable section of its fresher recruitment.
According to Saurabh the company operates in three salary brackets -
High bracket, Second bracket and third bracket depending on the quality
of the institute. Though for reasons of confidentiality, the company
refused to mention where the individual institutions stood, from our
experience in
B-School rankings,
we could safely assume that those institutions in the Top 20-25
rankings would form the high bracket, the next 25 in the second bracket
and the rest in the third bracket.
So depending on how your institute is ranked, by different agencies, you
can make an intelligent guess (to know where your institute stands see
the B-School Almanac that Careers360 has published where we presented
the past 5 years’ ranking of schools by five major publications). The
company recruits about 2500-3500 fresh talent every year across
ICAI, B-Schools and select Agriculture and
Law colleges, though the bulk of the recruitment would be from
B-Schools. Salaries at MBA-level would range from Rs. 3 lakhs to 12 lakhs depending on the institute and the candidate’s profile.
The firm is quite upfront about the opportunities and presents a clear picture of what is in store.
Banking
is not exactly a glamorous job, says Ram Kumar, Exectuive Director. It
demands meticulousness and demands in depth knowledge. So the company
seeks out students who show the hunger for performance and are team
players. The recruitment process consists of an aptitude test, a group
discussion, psychometric tests (which is outsourced to SH, which is a
UK-based business) and invariably several rounds of interviews. “When we
are selecting fresh talent passion should be there,
customer-orientation, conscience should be there. Dynamism, passion come
first, compliance is second,” says Saurab Singh
 |
“While aptitude may remain
one of the key determinants, it is positive attitude that enables young
graduates to build a career in the long run”
N. S kannan
ED & CFO, ICICI Bank |
Off-campus hiring/ direct hiring
The company also recruits people off- campus. Positions in middle management and specialized functions like Law
, Foreign Exchange and Technology Assessment are recruited directly through
advertisements, referrals and through Head Hunters. Mass recruitment at
front office,
executives and Sales functions are done at national level.
Local language skills too are welcome
Since banking also demands quite a bit of customer interface, competency in
English
language is not the sole criterion for selection. According to Saurab
Singh the bank goes out of the way to accommodate vernacular language
talent. In a case study, if a candidate cannot express himself in
English the panel allows him to communicate in his or her mother tongue.
If they are knowledgeable and good, the company recruits them and
trains them. “We look for
attitude and behaviour,” said Chanda Kochhar in an interview to this magazine.
Function areas, training and deployment
The group has financial interests across sectors and geographies. So
opportunities for growth are tremendous for any hard working aspirant.
In fact, most of top management at different ICICI subsidiaries have
been recruited from the parent company. Chanda Kochhar in her interview
eulogies the benefits of sticking to a particular company, especially
one like ICICI which offers diverse opportunities. “I think there is
huge advantage in sticking around because you are then such an inherent
part of that organization” she says. Kochhar herself moved from project
banking to retail banking to investments and then finally took over as
the CEO & MD of the bank.
Training for different functional areas vary and all candidates are put
through a mandatory training module after recruitment on the Banks ways,
functioning, code of ethics, rules and regulations, and select
candidates are put on rotation on different aspects of banking, before
they zero in on their specializations. Candidates recruited for
specialized functions do begin their careers in their chosen domains,
though at the middle management level lateral movements are permitted.
According to Saurabh Singh at middle and senior management the bank does
encourage lateral movement but at no point arbitrage on account of
salary and geography is permitted. But at the same time movement across
the group and between subsidiaries is permitted.
Industry-academia partnership
With over 20,000 new recruits each year, and business needs that are company-specific it is no wonder that
ICICI
gets into training on it own. According to Ram Kumar, ED, ICICI Bank
such an initiative is warranted because B-School curriculum is ossified
and does not produce enough candidates tuned to the needs of the
industry.
The company began by focusing on its front office and sales where the
attrition rate is quite high, even for the industry. It tied up with
NIIT to begin the
Institute for Finance, Banking and Insurance (IFBI).
Though the initiative was initially focused on training students
exclusively for ICICI and its subsidiaries, according to Saurabh Singh
it is now a service for the whole industry. IFBI-trained graduates are
present in firms like
HSBC,
Standard,
Citibank,
and others. The tie–up is a win-win situation because it releases
ICICI’s HR team from scanning thousands of fresh candidates and provides
them with a firm, ready cohort that is keenly interested in working for
the company. There are also exclusive tie ups with Manipal and NIIT to
train experienced graduates to assume junior and middle management level
positions.
Looking forward
“Banking is not a 9 to 5 job,” says Krishna Kumar, a trainer at
Banker’s Training Institute,
Chennai. Ten-hour work days are common and during financial year ends a
round-the-clock work schedules are not unheard of. With productivity
being the maxim, multitasking is the in thing. While it is a very good
paymaster, demands on time from a fresh recruit is quite high, he says.
Concurs Anurag Srivastava, an ex-employee, “It is a great place to work,
but for the first two years I had no personal life. What is good is
that it is more or less meritocratic and egalitarian.” Srivastava, now a
VP in an MNC bank says ICICI is the
HCL
of BFSI sector. “It is Indian, very proud, demands a lot, but does make
you emerge as a tough professional and most other BFSI firms do love to
recruit an ICICIan,” he concludes.
India
is likely to see acceleration in economic reforms over the next
quarter, and it is the right time to invest in the country as valuations
have become reasonable, CII President Adi Godrej has said.
