On the face of it, it looks like good news for the graduate cohort of 2017. A new report by High Fliers explains that Britain’s top employers are expecting to expand their graduate recruitment for the fifth year running to create more graduate jobs in 2017.
The report details that the employers in question are increasing their graduate vacancies by 4.3% and only 8 of the top 100 employers are actually reducing their graduate recruitment targets because of the uncertainty following the Brexit vote. The growth in graduate vacancies is largely coming from the Public Sector and high street and online retailers. These sectors alone are predicting they will employ a further 1,200 graduates in 2017.
So if you graduate this year and are looking for a well paid graduate job at one of Britain’s top 100 employers you are probably in good shape.
If this isn’t you (and that is 90% of the grad market – don’t worry!) we explore some other options later in the blog post.
What can you expect to earn on a Graduate Recruitment Scheme?
Well, it’s good news again. The average starting salary for a graduate in the top 100 companies is a whopping £30,000. That’s the same average salary as was reported last year, with a sixth of places on the top grad schemes providing starting salaries of more than £40,000. Unsurprisingly the top salaries on offer come from the investment banks, energy companies and law firms. Not so many marketing or digital employers then…
Who are Britain’s top 100 employers?
… and how are they chosen? Well it turns out that they are actually chosen by you, well, by you I mean graduates from 2016 who were asked to choose who they believed offered the best opportunities for graduates. I’ve taken a good look at this list and it’s clear to me that the graduates who were asked the question were the graduates who either applied for, or who won a place on, a graduate recruitment scheme – so this list by no means paints the whole graduate recruitment picture, in fact it only covers a tiny fraction (roughly 10%) of the graduate job market.
And in case you’re wondering, these are the companies that made the grade (listed A to Z):
Accenture
AECOM
Airbus
Aldi
Allen & Overy
Amazon
Apple
Army
Arup
AstraZeneca
Atkins
BAE Systems
Bain & Company
Baker & McKenzie
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Bank of England
Barclays
BBC
BDO
BlackRock
Bloomberg
BMW
Boots
Boston Consulting Group
BP
British Airways
BT
Cancer Research UK
Citi
Civil Service
Clifford Chance
Credit Suisse
Danone
Deloitte
Deutsche Bank
Diageo
DLA Piper
European Commission
ExxonMobil
EY
Facebook
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
Frontline
GlaxoSmithKline
Goldman Sachs
Google
Grant Thornton
Herbert Smith
Hogan Lovells
HSBC
IBM
Irwin Mitchell
Jaguar Land Rover
John Lewis Partnership
JP Morgan
KPMG
L’Oréal
Lidl
Linklaters
Lloyd’s
Lloyds Banking Group
Marks & Spencer
Mars
McDonald’s
McKinsey & Company
MI5 – The Security Service
Microsoft
Mondelez International
Morgan Stanley
Mott Macdonald
Nestlé
Network Rail
Newton Europe
NGDP for Local Government
NHS
Norton Rose Fulbright
Oxfam
Penguin Random House
Police
Procter & Gamble
PwC
RAF
Rolls-Royce
Royal Bank of Scotland
Royal Navy
Santander
Savills
Shell
Siemens
Sky
Slaughter and May
Standard Life
Teach First
Tesco
Transport for London
UBS
Unilever
Virgin Media
Wellcome Trust
WPP
What other options are there for graduates?
I’m guessing most of you who read this are more interested in a fun and rewarding digital marketing career than fat pay cheque and a car allowance; there’s more to life – right? And this list pretty much omits most of the companies where those jobs reside. I’m talking about the digital marketing agencies, the digital product businesses, the online retailers, the games makers, the tech start-ups and the many other small businesses who need digitally savvy marketing and sales staff, and all of whom incidentally are the lifeblood of the UK economy.
If you are interested in a career in digital marketing check out our digital marketing jobs page that shows you some of the best places to look for these types of role. And, if you’re feeling really keen, our online training takes you step-by-step through the recruitment process for digital marketing roles and gives you the basics of digital marketing so you can truly walk the walk.