Graduate selection process shakeup at Deloitte

Aneesha Mahil examines the changes the firm is making to their selection criteria 

With many students now going into third year and looking to apply for graduate schemes at major firms and organisations throughout the country, this week we have received news of a shakeup with the way Deloitte, the largest professional services network in the world, accesses its applicants.

Anyone that has applied for jobs along with Summer Internships knows just how tedious it can be, filling out information with regards to you’re A-Level results along with your university information. Arguing that they are attempting to ‘tap into a more diverse talent pool’, a new algorithm is reported to consider A-Level results based in context to the school’s average. For example, if three Cs is better than the average at your school, this will be considered in context, not against other applicants.

tap into a more diverse talent pool

As reported by the BBC, David Sproul, a senior partner and chief executive of Deloitte UK comments that ‘improving social mobility is one of the UK’s biggest challenges’. This comes at a similar time when recruiters are now looking away from purely academic results, focusing more broadly on the backgrounds of applicants too and any mitigating circumstances that may have hindered results in comparison to other students.

improving social mobility is one of the UK’s biggest challenges

Whilst it does seem that it is has come from good intentions, cynics have argued that it might devalue the positions of universities and the point of League Tables. Connor O’Shea, a third year Ancient History and Classics student points out that ‘many students have worked hard to achieve their grades and get into exceptional universities like Warwick or Oxbridge. It would be a shame if that hard work was ignored in the selection criteria and instead other areas were focused more heavily upon’.

Whilst the objectives to improve social mobility are certainly a top priority for a country, it is yet to be seen whether these new selection criteria will help improve the opportunities of all across the country of have different consequences that on face-value are difficult to anticipate. It will be interest to continue to monitor and see how it pans out over the next few years!