One thing unifies all recruiters – they want to employ the best.  Luckily they all define ‘best’ slightly differently, or only 5% of the population would have jobs!  When it comes to the graduate recruitment market though, all recruiters want proactivity which has lead to a closing-date-arms race amongst City Firms in particular.

It goes something like this – Firm’s say:
1- We want to beat the competition to the best students;
2- The best students only need to apply to a small number of employers;
3- The best students are proactive, career-orientated and definately aren’t spending their uni years in an alcohol infused haze;
4- We’ll get in first and hoover the best students up!

Getting in first means advertising first, opening applications first, and closing applications first.  Goldman Sachs opened it’s graduate recruitment for joiners in September 2012 at the beginning of August 2011.  Today I received an advert from Lloyds TSB inviting student to ‘pre-register’ for their graduate & internship processes.  The majority of City-based Finance graduate programmes have closing dates in October.

So if you are graduating next Summer from a Bachelors or Masters, and want to get on a City Graduate Programme, you’d better get applying now.