Bad publicity seems to be no bar to traditional companies attracting graduates, according to the latest research.
Despite thousands of job cuts and the threat of strikes on the horizon, the BBC has been voted the ideal place to work by new graduates.
Research by research firm Universum shows that engineering and humanities students all rate the BBC as their ideal employer, while business students chose PricewaterhouseCoopers as their first choice, with the BBC in third.
HSBC also fares well despite high-profile industrial action that is scheduled for the end of this week (see story below).
The Amicus trade union claims the bank has “lost the hearts and minds of its staff”, but HSBC was the second most popular choice among business students.
The main goal of new graduates across the three disciplines was to be able to balance their personal lives with their new career development.
However, there seems to be disillusionment about management in the UK, with only one in three business graduates showing interest in reaching managerial level, dropping to only one in six among humanities students.
Top graduate destinations
Engineering students
1 BBC
2 GSK
3 Ministry of Defence
4 Apple
5 Ferrari
Humanities students
1 BBC
2 Foreign & Common- wealth Office
3 Cabinet Office
4 Ministry of Defence
5 International Committee of the Red Cross
Business students
1 Pricewaterhouse-Coopers
2 HSBC
3 BBC
4 Ernst & Young
5 BMW
Source – AGR
Tradition still delivers
Despite the ever-growing number of ways you can recruit graduates, the traditional route of work experience remains the best way to get the top talent, according to graduate recruiters.
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More than 120 graduate recruiters, who collectively employed 11,000 graduates in the past 12 months, were surveyed for the AGR/Barkers National Graduate Media Audit.
However, online job ads are now rated more effective than campus recruitment drives.
