Deloitte scoops Personnel Todayís Award for Excellence in Graduate Recruitment

Deloitte has won the ëPersonnel Todayí award for Excellence in Graduate Recruitment. The award, judged by a panel of industry experts, recognises best practice in the human resources profession. The firm was also runner up for a Talent Management award, which recognises an organisationís ability to recruit and retain staff.

John Connolly, Deloitteís Chief Executive and Senior Partner, commented: ìThis is an excellent achievement and follows Deloitteís earlier success this year, when we were ranked second in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers 2006.î

The Excellence in Graduate Recruitment Award recognises key achievements of the graduate recruitment teamís 2006 campaign, which saw a large rise in applications on 2005, including the share of enquiries from women and ethnic minorities.

A variety of initiatives were implemented by the winning HR team, including online testing, allowing graduates to schedule their own interview slots and a unique partnership with the charity, Teach First, which funds eight recruits each year through a two-year teaching placement in some of Londonís most challenging schools before joining Deloitte.

The Personnel Today Award highlighted the teamís achievements which included:

Improving online recruitment, by enabling graduates to schedule their own interview time and dates;

Launching a íTaste of Deloitteí - a two-day work experience programme for students;

Linking up with the charity, Teach First;

Touring university campuses to hand out Deloitte-branded smoothies as part of a two-year íFeed Your Mindí campaign;

Holding 23 university presentations and 30 employability seminars across the UK;

Conducting research of 5,000 students from 52 universities on its recruitment activities; and

Targeting minority groups and non-business students.

Sarah Shillingford, Graduate Recruitment Partner, said: ìThis yearís biggest challenge was to ensure we would receive enough quality applications to fill some 1,200 vacancies, but on a budget per recruit lower that the industry average.

ìWe decided to implement a multi-tiered campaign which would focus our efforts on both building brand awareness and targeting of high quality students. The results were incredible and resulted in us receiving over 2,500 more applications than last year, thatís an increase of 30%. Weíre all absolutely delighted by this result, but the icing on the cake was receiving this fantastic award from the industry in recognition of all our hard work.î