Odds of Getting In

Odds of Getting In

Let's do some numbers. You like numbers, right? You must, if you want to work for a bank. There are roughly 5,500 commercial banks in the U.S. right this second (source). That's down from about 6,250 banks in 2011, by the way.

That means there are roughly 5,500 branch managers in the U.S., plus a handful of regional managers. But you're competing with hundreds of thousands of employees, thousands of whom have sales numbers equal to or better than yours. Do you work at Wells Fargo? So do 299,643 other people. Work at CitiBank? So do 175,006 other people. 

Even at a smaller bank like Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, you're still competing against 6,875 other people for a maximum of forty-nine bank manager spots. That's a 0.07 percent chance of becoming a bank manager—at a bank that owes $934 million to the U.S. government.

So, yeah. The odds aren't amazing for that particular position. But you could still be a general manager of a particular location.