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State Bank of India (SBI) the country’s largest lender plans to hire around 3500 officers to strengthen its operations and improve service delivery across the country. SBI has already recruited 505 Probationary Officers (POs) in June and the process to fill a similar number of positions is currently underway with applications already received said Kishore Kumar Poludasu Deputy Managing Director (HR) & Chief Development Officer (CDO) in an interview with PTI. On the specialist side Poludasu added that about 1300 officers have been selected to handle information technology and cybersecurity functions. SBI POs Recruitment Process The advertisement for 541 PO vacancies is out. Applications have already been received. The recruitment for POs is through a three-stage process: preliminaries mains and a psychometric test and interviews. Additionally he said around 3000 circle-based officers are now being considered. This should get concluded in the current financial year. Earlier this year SBI Chairman C S Setty announced that the banks total recruitment across categories would be about 18000. Of which around 13500 will be clerical recruitment and the remaining will be probationary officers and locally based officers. In the first quarter SBI announced the recruitment of 13455 junior associates and 505 POs to enhance the customer experience at its branches across the country. SBI Focus On Gender Diversity Poludasu also said the countrys largest lender has devised a strategy to boost gender diversity aiming to increase its women workforce to 30 per cent within 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 he said. The bank is taking measures to bridge the gap and achieve its medium-term goal of 30 per cent women in its workforce he said. He further said that the bank is committed to creating a workplace where women thrive at all levels and that through targeted programmes SBI fosters leadership work-life balance and dignity at work. Highlighting some of the women-centric measures undertaken by the bank Poludasu said the bank provides creche allowance for working mothers runs a family connect programme and offers training programmes to assist women employees returning from maternity sabbatical or extended sick leave. In addition he said Empower Her is a flagship initiative to identify mentor and groom women for leadership through structured leadership labs and coaching sessions to increase female representation in leadership roles and build a strong pipeline of future top women executives.  (With Inputs From PTI)