- Most retail banks, with a few exceptions, offer daily shift times and allow most employees to enjoy free time on weekends, evenings, and holidays. Usually, credit unions and banks are rarely open on holidays, but some call centers and retail banks, particularly those located inside a grocery store or department store, are frequently open on weekends and some evenings. The advantage for professionals who choose banking is that they can frequently choose to go to work for a bank with a schedule that will fit the needs of their personal life.
- Most banks have excellent benefit packages, offering medical, dental, and life insurance benefits as well as retirement plan options and personal or sick leave days and vacation benefits. Offices are always clean and pleasant, heated or air conditioned, since personal comfort, both for the employee as well as for the customer, is of utmost importance. Banks are required to be regularly examined and audited, and must follow many regulations and procedural rules and fair trade practices, making a bank or a regulatory agency a highly supervised and safe environment for all employees.
- Banking institutions offer many opportunities for advancement, and many banks will even pay for or reimburse the talented employee for continuing education courses, as well as courses toward a college degrees, with some requirements. Banks and banking regulatory agencies offer many opportunities for advancement for ambitious professionals. A skilled and knowledgeable banking professional will be in demand for promotions both within his or her own bank (depending on the bank’s size), as well as in other competing banks with similar departments. Banking is an industry that is not projected to go away in the near or far future–far from it. With the growing economy in many developing countries as well as our own, and with the continuous growth in population, there will continue to be a growing need for banks to hold and loan money, to make monetary transactions, and to keep hiring people.
One of the biggest disadvantages of bank careers is that serving the public can often be extremely stressful. Money issues are sensitive topics for most people, and customers can be quite rude and may become irate if the transaction is not correct or not handled perfectly to their satisfaction. A banking professional must be willing to work tactfully and carefully with a bank’s customers, and must be able to confidently and correctly handle all banking transactions.
- To work in the banking industry or have a Banking Jobs, the professional must be good with numbers, cash, and money, and must be able to be patient and diligent in the accounting duties.
- This is not a career for someone who is casual with finances. The professional must be willing to take the responsibility of large amounts of money and must be able to carefully account for all the monies under his or her care.
- This is also not a career for someone who dislikes using the computer or an adding machine – nor is it a career for someone who hates to balance a checkbook.
- While there are a myriad of possible career choices in banking, they all center around two things: money, and the accounting of money.
To be successful in Banking Jobs, the banking employee must enjoy wearing professional dress such as a suit, dress shirt and tie for men, or a pantsuit, dress, or skirt suit for women, and dress shoes. A person who prefers the casual dress of jeans and t-shirts or a uniform shirt and khaki pants may feel out of place dressing to impress in a bank setting. The practice of a professional dress code for the banking industry came from the need to portray both an attitude of wealth and strength along with a conservative and professional attitude toward the money that the bank holds on behalf of its customers. In the banking industry, casual dress may infer that “we play around a lot and don’t care what we do or what we look like”, but a professional, understated, wardrobe is supposed to convey the message that “we pay attention to detail and take care with your money”.
Some Banking Jobs require that employees stand on their feet all day, such as a bank teller. Others demand that the employee stay at a desk, hunched over the computer screen, crunching numbers or formulating reports. A person would be well advised to determine all the negatives and weigh them against the benefits before deciding on a career in the banking field.
Source: Banking Info