You probably expect a ranking of the top companies for graduates to work for to tell you who the top companies for graduates to work for are, right? That’s what we thought!
So we were pretty surprised to learn a couple of years ago that existing graduate employer rankings showed which companies students thought were good employers, rather than the companies whose actual employees said they loved working there. This meant that year after year, students were just seeing lists of which companies had the best graduate marketing or even, in some cases, the best consumer brands, rather than those who actually offered the best working conditions for their new employees.
We decided that this was no good and so we put together The Top Companies For Graduates To Work For. Every year we go out and survey thousands of employees who have recently graduated and who work for UK employers. We ask them to rate all of the important points about what it’s really like to work for their company – such as Work/Life Balance, Career Progression and how much Responsibility they have (see p9 ‘How The Rankings Work’ for the full details on how this works).
The result is that the Top Companies For Graduates To Work For is entirely meritocratic. It ignores factors such as how well known a company is or how much they spend on their recruitment marketing – both of which have a huge effect on other employer rankings. Instead it simply provides a list of the very best companies for graduates to work for – according to the people who work there. In short if you can land a graduate job at one of these employers, you are likely to be a very content employee in a couple of years’ time.
What the list shows is that a lot of well known companies are also great places to work but don’t be surprised to also find that a lot of companies that you may have never heard of are also great employers – they just may not have the same brand recognition or recruitment marketing budget.
Find out who the best graduate employers are here.
