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 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 in the past two and a half decades, and for those due to leave university in
Final year undergraduates from the ‘Class of 2024’ who took part in the study were selected 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 offers
the best opportunities for graduates?”. The question was deliberately open- ended and students were not shown a list of employers to choose from or
2025 and beyond, there are expected to be more than 200,000 graduate-level vacancies available annually. For students researching their
prompted during the interview. The wide selection of answers given during the research shows that final year students used very different criteria to decide which employer offered the best opportunities for graduates. Some evaluated employers based on the quality of the
career options, finding the ‘right’ graduate employer can often be a daunting prospect. What basis can you use to evaluate such a large number of different organisations and the employment opportunities they offer for new graduates after university?
“ The accounting & professional services firm PwC has retained its place as the UK’s leading graduate employer. ”
recruitment promotions they’d seen whilst at university – either online or in-person – or their recent experiences during the application and graduate selection process. Other final year students focused on the ‘graduate employment proposition’ as their main guide – the quality of training and development an employer offers, 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.
The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers is compiled annually by the independent market 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 14,271 students who were due to graduate from universities across the UK in the summer of 2024. The research examined students’ experiences during their search for a first graduate job and asked them about their attitudes to employers.
TOP 100 GRADUATE EMPLOYERS 11
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