Hiring the Right People.

• Position: Today's bank jobs are different from those of the past - Brief Article

Bank jobs are different from other jobs, and they're different from bank jobs of the past, according to the authors of "How to Hire and Develop Your Next Top Performer: The Five Qualities That Make Salespeople Great" (McGraw-Hill, 2001). It's no longer enough, the authors say, to find an employee who's good with numbers: He or she also needs good people skills--a combination rarely found in the same person.

"This means that a financial institution would probably be able to successfully hire one really good teller or loan officer out of ten superficially qualified applicants," the authors report. "Is this expensive? Of course it is, but how much less expensive is this rigorous hiring than the loss of one customer with the multiplied effect of that loss? How much better is it to concentrate just a little more effort on bringing in the right people for the right jobs to begin with, and spending the necessary time and money to train and supervise these appropriate people, than to spend the enormous money and efforts required in continually recruiting and firing--and continually losing customers?"

As banks enter an intensely competitive and less regulated environment, it is critical for banks to hire people with sales skills, they say. "While a banking professional must certainly have detail ability, organizational skills and good financial orientation, he or she must combine these skills with the...