Researching The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers By Gill Thomas Publisher, High Fliers Publications
W hen the first edition of The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers was published for the first time in 1999, there were an estimated five thousand employers, large and small, recruiting graduates from UK universities. The number of employers recruiting graduates has risen steadily since and for those due to leave university in 2026 and beyond, there are expected to be up to 200,000 graduate-level vacancies available annually.
at random to represent the full cross-section of finalists at their universities, not just those who had already confirmed their career plans and secured graduate employment. The question used to produce the Top 100 rankings was “Which employer do you think o!ers the best opportunities for graduates?”. The question was deliberately open-ended and
students were not shown a list of employers to choose from or prompted during the interview. The wide selection of answers given
Finding the ‘right’ graduate employer can often be a daunting prospect.
during the research shows that final year students used very di!erent criteria to decide which employer o!ered the best opportunities for graduates. Some evaluated employers based on the quality of the recruitment promotions they’d seen whilst at university – either
What basis can you use to evaluate such a large number of di!erent organisations and the employment opportunities they o!er for new graduates after university? The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers is compiled annually by the independent market
“ This is the seventh time the Civil Service – best known for its Fast Stream programme – has been named the UK’s leading graduate employer. ”
online or in-person – or their recent experiences during the application and graduate selection process. Other final year students focused on the ‘graduate employment o!er’ as their main guide – the quality of training and development an employer provides, the starting salary and remuneration package available, and the practical aspects of a first graduate job, such as its location or the likely working hours. Across the full survey sample, final year students
research company, High Fliers Research, through interviews with final year students at the country’s leading universities. This latest edition is based on research with 15,557 students who were due to graduate from universities across the UK in the summer of 2026. The research examined students’ experiences during their search for a first graduate job and asked them about their attitudes to employers. Final year undergraduates from the ‘Class of 2026’ who took part in the study were selected
TOP 100 GRADUATE EMPLOYERS 11
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