The Audit Commission Recruits Tomorrowís Managers

GradWeb, the experts in graduate recruitment have been appointed by The Audit Commission to manage the companyís graduate selection process.

As the largest employer of public sector auditors in the world, the Audit Commission recruits approximately 30-50 graduates each year to ìbe the managers of tomorrowî, explained Marina Aldridge, Head of Resourcing & Recruitment.

The Audit Commission, which operates in areas as diverse as local government, housing, hospitals, and criminal justice, recently underwent a major restructure and it was decided to seek new ways of streamlining many of their processes.

Marina Aldridge said: ìI wanted to bring all of our recruitment and resourcing programmes on line to be more effective. Graduate recruitment was chosen as the first to target. We looked at the whole process and how we recruited, and then we decided to outsource many of the time consuming, yet vital elements of the graduate recruitment process, up to the assessment centre stage.

ìPreviously we have used line managers to sift applications and carry out interviews,ì explained Marina. ìBut, this a very time consuming process, especially for the managers that have other priorities.î

ìWe saw GradWeb present a case study with Unilever at an AGR event and were impressed with their work. Later when we began to seek references, GradWebís name was mentioned again in connection with the local government finance scheme, and everyone was very positive about the company, so we have appointed GradWeb to manage our graduate recruitment campaign for 2004/2005î she said.

The AC-E Squad campaign, which launched early in October 2004, aims to attract graduates from all backgrounds who are interested in a career as a financial auditor.

The four year programme includes following the highly acclaimed industry CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy) course as well as a number of in-house initiatives designed to equip the graduates to be tomorrowís managers.

Said Marina:îThe majority of our senior auditors have come into our organisation via the graduate recruitment programme. At the Audit Commission none of our 800 clients are the same. Each brings new issues, and the sheer scope of our work means that our employees enjoy an exceptional amount of variety.î

ìGradWeb has proved to be highly efficient and a valuable extension of our team, as well as great fun to work with.î