Re:locate magazine, winter 2006/7

“What does it take to pull in the grads?”

Attracting bright graduates is something to which every decent company aspires. Which ones are getting it right – and why? Re:locate takes a look...

The 2006 poll of Top 100 Graduate Employers was determined by interviewing some 16,000 final year students chosen at random from across the UK. All were asked the question, “Which employer do you think offers the best opportunities for graduates?” Between them, the ‘Class of 2006’ name some 500 organisations from major manufactures to the ‘Big Four’ accounting and professional services firms, government departments to investment banks, leading charities to well-known IT firms. The one hundred employers who were mentioned most often during the research form The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers.

Enticing graduates

The companies we approached were surprisingly coy when it came to discussing their graduate relocation packages, or lack of them. What does seem clear from The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, however, is that, as far as relocation packages are concerned, the more popular an organisation, the less it has to do to entice graduates to join it. That popularity can be attributed to anything from the nature of the job itself, to the perceived ‘glamour’ of the company to where it’s located. Cities such as London are always likely to hold a certain cachet for young graduates, and in fact High Fliers’ Research showed that most of those surveyed wanted to work in London or the South. In 2007, three-quarters of leading employers will be recruiting graduates to work in the capital and more than half have vacancies in the south east of England or the Midlands. About a third of employers are offering jobs in the north west, south west, Yorkshire or the north east of England. The region with the fewest graduate employers is East Anglia. Enterprising organisations based in areas that are likely to be less popular with graduates are in a position to steal a march on their competitors, though, simply by offering some sort of incentive to would-be new recruits. For instance, organisations could offer relocation guides that sell the benefits of the areas in which they’re based, they could help new recruits to find accommodation or might consider subsidising the cost of rent for a fixed period until new employees have found themselves a permanent base.

Top of the pops

Leading Destinations for 2006 Graduates highlights those fields that graduates most want to work in. Clearly it’s the same story for those professions perceived as being desirable: they can afford to call the tune. Media is the sector that holds the number two spot (with teaching at number one), for example, and the BBC has far more applicants than it does vacancies. Interestingly, investment banking is the fourth most popular destination: some 10.8% of graduates have got their eyes firmly on their future pay-packets.

Money matters

With the average student leaving university some £10,000 in debt, concern over the size of starting salaries is understandable. Luckily, the UK’s leading graduate employers are set to boost starting salaries by 7.8% in 2007 – one of the highest rises ever recorded, taking average packages to £26,400. This is a £1,900 increase on last year’s average graduate starting salary. According to the 2006 results, the highest starting salary published by this year’s Top 100 Employers is £38,000, as offered by retailer Aldi. More than a fifth of the top graduate programmes will now pay graduates at least £30,000 when they start work later this year. The most generous salaries tend to be those on offer from investment banks (an average of £35,000), law firms (average £30,000) and consulting firms (average £28,500), although these rates are largely unchanged on 2006 rates.