AFTER the IT industry faced a setback following the infamous recession, the word which has become more famous and fearsome than Tsunami, the next popular option for the students, unemployed and for working professionals is the banking sector ­ a more easier and more promising successor to the MBA.

Students, regardless of their discipline from science or engineering are giving bank exams in large numbers ­ the 36 lakh who have applied to take the SBI bank exam is an indication.

"To diagnose the reason for this present trend isn't that difficult," explains Prof Venkata Krishnan, director, Success School of Banking. "Though IT lured more people with its pay package and vacancies, the present economic slump taught the people a lesson about security ­ perhaps one of the few good things to learn from recession. The only other field that promised a decent pay package and job security was the banking sector," he said.

In his institution to train those pursuing bank exams, about 70 per cent of the candidates are from engineering and science courses.

Though in the past, banks only preferred commerce graduates, the entry was opened for other graduates for two main reasons because of the industrialization, which needed specialized staff to handle technical loans for manufacturing industries and others, and there was a dearth of commerce graduates applying for these jobs.

"The latter was because more people preferred engineering and science subjects to arts and even the few commerce graduates who passed out of college had other and better fields such as chartered accountants, cost accounting, company secretaries and management," he added.

"Not just this, but except the IT jobs, other jobs for subjects such as chemical engineers and other disciplines were available only at the scientist cadre. Even the few jobs ava i l abl e a re s c at t e re d around the nation, mainly in North India, where the cost of living is higher, and the pay, less," said Gopinath, doing his third year Chemical engineering. He is now writing a bank exam. Along with job security, the huge number of vacancies was another major number of vacancies was another major factor that catapulted the banking jobs' fame in the recent years.

"In just the past four months about 20,000 bank jobs were listed vacant. The exams are conducted mainly for clerical cadre, which asks for just 12th education, and Probationary officers, which asks for graduates from any discipline. In SBI alone about 11,000 vacancies was listed this year. The next year's vacancy list is projected to be 50,000 jobs," explained Ahamed Khalid, Director, Axiom Institute for Banking.

He cites that the competition due to the increasing number o f b a n k s, a n d extension of m o r e branches and services such as credit cards, debit cards, ATMs and insurance policies are the main reasons for the increasing number of vacancies.