Times Top 100 Graduate Employers

^{As we continue to increase our focus on recruiting young talent into the business, this year Microsoft were named 21st in the UK Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, and the second IT Employer of choice.}

To research the leading graduate employers of 2004-2005, the UK Graduate Careers Survey 2005 conducted face-to-face interviews with 16,113 final year students from the ‘Class of 2005’, studying at 30 leading universities in the UK and Ireland. They asked the question ‘Which organisation do you believe offers the best opportunities for graduates?’. The question is deliberately open ended and students are not given any suggestions or prompted with a list of employers names. The aim is to identify the employers who present the best overall recruitment proposition for graduates.

Some other key highlights which came out as a result of the research were that 70% of the finalists looking for a career in IT had had some level of contact with Microsoft and one in five individuals had actually met with a representative from Microsoft. The vast majority of students interested in a career in IT or Sales thought that we were either ‘very’ or ‘quite appealing’ as a graduate employer, due to having a prestigious reputation and also offering excellent graduate opportunities. Overall the finalists rated Microsoft and its opportunities for graduates extremely positively. The majority of the students who were interested in a career in IT or Sales thought that the ‘quality of the initial graduate training programme’ (90%), the ‘opportunities for career development and progression’ (80%), and the firm’s ‘overall reputation’ (85%) were either excellent or good.

Finalists were also asked which words they thought were most appropriate to describe Microsoft, within top six included, ‘Market Leader’, ‘Successful’ and ‘Innovative’, and out of all the graduate employers that took part in the survey this year we were the only company to have the word ‘Entrepreneurial’ used to describe us.

If anyone has any questions about the above please contact ^{Nikki Wakefield. If you are interested in finding out further information about our graduate opportunities or sharing details of our MACH (Microsoft Academies for College Hires) programmes with friends or family please visit www.microsoft.com/uk/graduates}