Our campus events kicked off this week. Across the course of this academic year the Deloitte Student Recruitment team will run over 1,000 events on campuses the length and breadth of the UK. We have literally just said goodbye to our summer students on Friday, and the following Monday it all starts again as we travel up to Edinburgh for our first event of the new season.
The nature of the work we do is very cyclical and changes depending on whether students are at school or university or on their holidays. We open our doors to applications on 1st July (with a 1750 hiring target, we need 15 months to identify and on-board the required calibre and volume of candidates) and we have noticed candidates applying earlier and earlier. So we use the last term at school and university to promote our 1st July opening for our programmes beginning the following autumn (2014 in this case). The summer months see us hosting over 350 summer interns, assessing the early bird applications and preparing for events in the coming academic year. It is quite daunting. The first event of 1000. That we have spent over 3 months in planning. Myself and the team are quite nervous, but also quite excited – from spending the last quarter in the office we are now out on campus. When students are back at university, so are we.
Week 1
We decided to travel by train to Edinburgh – the 5 hour journey gives me 5 hours quality laptop time! It also allows us to run through any last minute preparation. We meet with the Scotland team and deliver some quality events in Edinburgh (we had 80 odd attendees), Glasgow (with 60 odd) and St Andrews (30 odd). The events require a massive resource commitment and we have at least 15 hosts from the business at each event. It is really important that students have the opportunity to talk to people from within the business and vice-versa. I think students initially choose a business to apply to by looking at their marketing materials, but to make a real choice on such an important decision as where to start your career – we need to meet!
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