The State Bank of India (SBI) has revealed its plan to hire 3,500 officers by the end of fiscal year 2025-2026 (FY26). This will be done with the aim of bolstering operations and enhancing service delivery nationwide.
The bank recruited 505 Probationary Officers (POs) and 13,455 Junior Associates in June 2025. It had also begun hiring for 5,583 Junior Associate (Customer Support and Service) positions across its branches and offices nationwide in August 2025.
In an interview with PTI, SBI Deputy Managing Director (HR) & Chief Development Officer (CDO) Kishore Kumar Poludasu said the process to hire more officers had already begun. The advertisement for 504 PO positions has already been released, and the bank has started receiving applications.
The recruitment for the PO positions will be in three stages: preliminaries, mains, and a psychometric test and interviews. Poludasu added that “around 3,000 circle-based officers are now being considered. This should get concluded in the current financial year.”
SBI had announced earlier in 2025 that it planned on hiring about 18,000 new employees across different categories, out of which 13,500 were slated for clerical positions. The rest of the positions would be probationary officers and locally based officers.
Poludasu also shared light on SBI’s aim to have 30% of its staff be women within the next five years.
“If we talk about frontline staff, women are almost 33 per cent, but as a total, if you see, they account for 27 per cent of the total workforce. So, we will be working towards improving this percentage so that the diversity gets further improved,” said Poludasu.
To bridge the gender gap, Poludasu explained that the bank was focusing on its medium-term goal of 30% women in the workforce by 2030. He emphasised SBI’s commitment to creating a workplace where women can thrive at all levels, through targeted programmes that help foster leadership, work-life balance, and dignity at work.
Some of the initiatives undertaken by SBI, as per Poludasu, include creche allowance for working mothers, a family connect programme, and training programmes to assist women employees returning from maternity, sabbatical, or extended sick leave.
He also talked about the ‘Empower Her’ flagship to identify, mentor and groom women for leadership through structured leadership labs and coaching sessions. The initiative aims to increase female representation in leadership roles and build a strong pipeline of future top women executives.
