Microsoft have been rated as the best company for graduates to work for and the Consumer Goods industry has been voted the best sector for graduates to work in, in the leading annual survey of graduate-level employees, conducted by the employee review site TheJobCrowd.com.
The site asked over 4,000 graduates in their first three years of employment to score their company on a range of criteria including responsibility, progression opportunities, colleague interaction, training, work-life balance and benefits.
The rankings consist of a mixture of well-known multinationals and smaller employers. Many well-known graduate employers are conspicuous by their absence.
IT giant Microsoft came top for the 2nd year in a row. House-builder Barratt Developments was rated second and Brightsource, the marketing services company, came a close third. Other companies making it into the Top 10 included Sky, National Grid, Vodafone, FDM Group, GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble and Mars
Consumer Goods was rated as the top sector to work in, with 10 Consumer Goods companies being ranked among the Top 100 Employers. Graduates in the sector provided particularly good ratings for the Responsibility levels on offer and for the Company Culture at their employers.
The rankings, which are distributed as a print guide to 70,000 graduates at every single UK university, list the Top 100 Employers, the Top 25 Smaller Employers and the Top 10 Companies across 17 sectors, including Advertising, Banking & Finance, Engineering and Retail.
Natasha Freeman, co-founder of TheJobCrowd.com, says that the nature of the rankings throws up a number of surprises due to the list being 100% based on the opinions of graduate employees.
Mrs. Freeman said: “All of the information was collected anonymously so employees give a truthful inside-view of what it is like to work for their employer.”
“A lot of the companies that graduates have heard of and might think of as good employers actually turn out to be less good to work for when we hear directly from their employees, while there are many less well-known companies who were rated as excellent graduate employers.
“It is only by hearing the views of those actually working for these companies that graduates can really know who is a great company to work for.”
Co-founder Keren Mitchell said that the unique make-up of the list had big implications for graduates looking for jobs: “The last couple of years have seen record numbers of applicants for graduate roles at the most well-known employers so graduates need to look beyond just these names when applying for roles. There are a huge number of companies who are great employers but may not yet be on graduates’ radars. There are also many familiar household names that many graduates might not realise offer very good graduate job opportunities.
“We are delighted that companies such as Carluccio’s, Innocent Drinks and EasyJet, as well as many smaller firms, feature very highly on the list, alongside some of the more traditional names in graduate recruitment, such as Unilever, John Lewis Partnership and Deloitte.”
Top 10 Large Employers:
- Microsoft
- Barratt Developments
- Brightsource
- Sky
- National Grid
- Vodafone
- FDM Group
- GlaxoSmithKline
- Procter & Gamble
- Mars
Top 10 Smaller Employers:
- Chaucer
- Capacitas
- Kiln Group
- Grosvenor
- innocent drinks
- Carluccio’s
- Leap29
- DAS
- Croudace Homes
- Whitbread
