Public sector banks are bringing in competition in their management of employees by recruiting aggressively from the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).

In a first, two of the top public sector banks —Union Bank of India and Bank of Baroda — have hired 70 students from IIMs this year, a record for them. All of them have joined the banks, confirmed a senior official handling human resource issues at one of the banks. While Union Bank has picked 50, BoB has taken on 20 from the institutes — the top draw for campus recruitments for management positions by India’s corporate sector. The cream is usually picked up by financial sector companies including Wall Street investment firms. But the global meltdown dried up offers from those firms and created an opening for others.

However, the public sector banks have hardly pushed selection from these or even other management institutes aggressively in past years, except in their subsidiaries like merchant banking arms.

The offers were made at the same time as the two banks were recruiting officer trainees this year. To make the offers attractive, the banks have placed the IIM grads two ranks above the other officer trainees, which works out to about a 12-year seniority against other officer grade trainees. MV Nair, chairman and managing director of Union Bank confirmed the development. “For those recruited from the top institutes, the bank has offered scale-III package’’.

MD Mallya, chairman and managing director of Bank of Baroda, said this was necessary as the recruits would be handling specialised desks including treasury operations and even overseas assignments soon. He is not fazed that there would be competition from the better paying foreign financial companies next year at the IIM campuses.

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