Network Rail have been crowned the best firm for graduates to work for, as voted by university leavers at British companies.
The results saw the firm score a 92% positive rating, followed closely by Mars (91%) and Microsoft (89%).
Barratt Developments, John Lewis, Teach First, Red Gate Software, British Airways, FDM Group and ASDA made up the rest of the top ten.
The results are based on thousands of anonymous reviews from employees in their first three years of employment at hundreds of firms. The reviews ask employees to rate their employer on the issues that most affect job satisfaction – including career progression, training, salary & benefits and what their colleagues are like.
Natasha Freeman, who ran the survey, said she believes the results offer graduates a much clearer picture of which companies really are great employers.
She said: “We’ve had thousands of recently graduated employees submit anonymous reviews of what their company is really like to work for. We are delighted to publish our findings and highlight the employers who really do provide their graduate employees with a great experience – not those who just market themselves as doing so. Once graduates are doing the job, they don’t care about the perception – they want to be working for a genuinely good employer.
“We wanted to level the playing field so that firms of all sizes, sectors and budgets could be compared fairly. The only thing that really matters is how good an employer they are and, by asking their employees to tell us anonymously, that’s exactly what we’ve found out.
“You probably wouldn’t think of trains as the most exciting area to work in but Network Rail topped this year’s list and scored particularly highly for work / life balance and for training, so it’s understandable that their graduate staff enjoyed working there. One reviewer even said that he’d ‘only been there for two months but I’ve fallen in love with trains and the principles that the company stands for.
“It’s good to see that large firms such as Mars and Microsoft, who typically also rank well in the traditional lists have done so well as they are clearly backing up their marketing with a similarly positive graduate experience – scoring particularly highly for responsibility and career progression respectively.”
