Opportunity to change roles a highlight of AIB career

MAGS Casey's best friend's father was a bank manager, and a real, albeit closed, bank was the backdrop for their games.

"One of my main childhood memories is of the two of us in the Munster and Leinster Bank (pre-AIB days) in Roscommon. We played with the dockets and lodgement slips, pretending they were money. I was always the banker and she was the customer. That was our favourite game," says Ms Casey who is now an assistant manager in AIB's strategic development unit.

On leaving the Convent of Mercy, Roscommon, Ms Casey did a one-year commercial course and then applied for a job with Bank of Ireland and AIB. "I was successful with both but chose AIB because I thought it had a better reputation."

That was 1980 and getting a job in the bank was, like the civil service, a good pensionable option, a job for life. "Now, it's not a job anymore, it's more a career," says Ms Casey.

After her induction period, she was posted to the credit-card centre in College Street in Dublin. She teamed up with another rural recruit and found a flat. "We lived together for years. You really form good friendships working in the bank." Her next move was to a branch (now closed) at 63/64 O'Connell Steet, Dublin. "I dealt with customers on a face-to-face basis, doing accounts, cash, foreign exchange . . . I loved my years there."

Then Ms Casey applied for a transfer to Britain and found herself in Wembley. Her future husband, also Irish, lived in Wembley and they returned home, briefly, to get married.

Luckily, their permanent move back to Dublin, preceded the UK property crash. Back home, she worked in 10-11 O'Connell Street. AIB then introduced the concept of sales professionalism where each branch appointed an inbranch and a mobile salesperson to sell their products.

"It's not a `hard sell'. We look at the needs of each individual customer," she says. ` Her first promotion came when she moved to the Killiney business unit as sales and marketing co-ordinator for five south-county branches.

Each year, AIB runs a customer service team awards competition. If a branch achieves a certain score, it progresses to the quarter finals and must make a presentation.

AIB Bray made it through and this was the first time Ms Casey says she was in the bank centre. "We had to give a pitch to eight executives including Tom Mulcahy, and we made it through to the semi-final but didn't win out," she says.

"At this stage, I was still attached to retail banking but now I was outside the counter. Then I applied for my current job - assistant manager in the strategic development unit. A huge part of it is to use my retail branch knowledge to develop new programmes for our staff out in the branches. We develop all sorts of training programmes."

En route from Roscommon to her current job at AIB's headquarters in Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ms Casey studied part-time, spending two years in UCD doing a certificate in investment advice. She has also done two years of internal product knowledge exams.

"The challenges are far greater than when I first joined and there was no database," says Ms Casey. "Now, we have fantastic IT. There is 24-hour and Internet banking. Customers' expectations are way higher. In the past loyalty was a given, now we have to earn it."

Last year, when AIB advertised its graduate recruitment programme, there were 2,500 applicants for 300 places. This year's campaign will be launched at the AEISEC graduate recruitment fair, sponsored by The Irish Times, AGSCI and AIB, in the RDS next Tuesday. Graduates of all disciplines can apply.