Expanding Banks Bemoan Lack of Qualified Tellers - WSJ.com

Expanding Banks Bemoan Lack of Qualified Tellers - WSJ.com
July 17, 2007
Expanding Banks Bemoan
Lack of Qualified Tellers
By SUDEEP REDDY
July 17, 2007
For years, PNC Bank found it relatively easy to fill the humblest branch
job: the teller. Offering modest wages and standard hours, the position
required only basic skills and was supposed to diminish with the advent of
new technology such as ATMs and online banking.
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Today, PNC needs more tellers than ever and is having trouble finding
them.
• The Situation: Banks are having trouble
finding qualified tellers as they expand their branch
networks.
• The Cause: Some banks say job candidates
out of high school often don't have the basic math
skills or customer service touch to fill the roles.
• The Next Step: Community colleges are
quickly creating programs to train tellers, while
banks add perks and raise wages.
Throughout the U.S. service economy, companies are
stumbling across similar problems as they transform once
mechanical front-line jobs into troubleshooting and
marketing roles that demand greater abilities. For banks, the
entry-level teller position has become the primary way to
win new customers and sell new services to existing ones.
As a result of that switch, and a boom in the number of
bank branches, there's a staffing crunch in the industry that
is forcing employers to raise wages, perks and training to get qualified staff. PNC is now targeting retirees,
homemakers and college students to fill teller jobs. This month, it also started offering some health benefits
for part-time staff in these positions.
"Our model has changed," says Kathy D'Appolonia, manager of corporate recruiting at PNC Financial
Services Group Inc., the bank's Pittsburgh-based parent company. "In effect, we're competing not only with
other banks but all retailers to find staff."
The low 4.5% unemployment rate is making hiring difficult for employers of all kinds, pushing up wages at
a time when the Federal Reserve is closely watching inflationary pressures.
Banks say they face an additional problem: Many of today's high school graduates are no longer equipped
with the skills -- from fundamental math to the customer-service touch -- to fill increasingly complicated
jobs.
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Expanding Banks Bemoan Lack of Qualified Tellers - WSJ.com
"People don't know how to count back change," says J.J. Sanchez, a College of Southern Nevada official
who is working with local banks to launch a new teller-training program. "I hear that from everybody. It is a
lost art."
The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted five years ago that the number of tellers would drop 12%
this decade, from almost 500,000 in 2000. Instead, despite the advent of new, labor-saving technologies, the
number of tellers rose to 603,000 last year and is expected to edge up in the years ahead.
The time when bankers' hours denoted a short workday are long gone: Branches are now often staying open
into the evening and weekends. Tellers, who generally have a high-school education, are being positioned to
interact more with customers and nudge them toward newer financial services.
"It's amazing what customers will tell a teller sometimes," says James Edrington, who runs the American
Bankers Association's certification programs, including a new training course for tellers. "If someone's
talking about the need for a new kitchen, with a sharp teller the light bulb may go off: 'home-equity line of
credit!' "
Tellers' median pay was $22,140 in 2006, according to BLS.
That will likely soon change. Earlier this year, bank
executives listed tellers at No. 2 -- behind business lenders --
among positions requiring "significantly more" pay to attract
or retain workers, according to a survey from the bankers'
association.
Officials at LaSalle Bank, the Chicago-based unit of ABN
Amro Holding NV, have started discussing whether teller
applicants need an associate degree instead of just a highschool
diploma or equivalent. Their worry: bank branches
tend to fill more-senior positions from the ranks of tellers. As
a result, the company needs people with more education to
fill the teller jobs so they can be trained and promoted.
"If the teller doesn't have the educational requirements or the
background to be in those positions, we end up in the same boat, just higher up," says Wil Lewis, LaSalle's
head of talent acquisition for North America.
LaSalle has raised wages, matched salaries and put more effort into providing career guidance to help find
and retain qualified tellers. Last year, the company teamed up with the College of DuPage, a community
college near Chicago, to get qualified tellers in the door.
Similar programs have popped up across the country, especially in areas where banks are seeking out new
customers, such as low-skilled workers and low-wage immigrants, who previously didn't use banks.
Demand is so high that students at Los Angeles Trade-Technical
College, which launched a teller-training program two years ago, are
being recruited by banks midway through the course, says Allison
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Expanding Banks Bemoan Lack of Qualified Tellers - WSJ.com
Tom-Miura, director of the bank-teller program.
In Gallatin, Tenn., local bankers appealed over lunch to the president
of Volunteer State Community College to help them train tellers. The
banks were poaching from each other as they added branches,
competing with national chains that were also expanding in the city
of 27,000 about 25 miles north of Nashville.
"There has been more demand than supply for good, capable tellers,"
says Ed Mayberry, regional president of GreenBank, a unit of Greene
County Bancshares Inc., with 64 branches across Tennessee. "We all
have had to become more competitive and aggressive."
Volunteer State launched its teller course in February, the month
after the lunch with the local bankers.
"I was expecting maybe we'd get a dozen people," says John Espey, academic dean of the school's business
division. "The enrollment went kind of like 'boom, boom, boom, boom.' " After finding a larger room, the
school cut off the spring class at 40 and made plans for another class this summer.
Carrie Green, a 22-year-old from nearby Lafayette, worked as a nurse assistant after graduating from high
school until deciding that she wanted a career with better long-term prospects.
All the banks to which she applied turned her away. A month after Volunteer State's five-week course,
which taught everything from how banks work to spotting counterfeit bills, she landed a teller job at Wilson
Bank & Trust in Lebanon, Tenn.
Ms. Green says she knew "a few things" about banking before the course, but adds: "I didn't realize there
was as much to it as there is. I just thought that things happened through the computer."
Now she's sticking with her new field and plans to eventually move up.
"Where we live, there's not a whole lot of job security," Ms. Green says. "I plan on being in banking until I
retire."
Write to Sudeep Reddy at sudeep.reddy@wsj.com 1
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