Despite Brexit, London remains the top choice for recent and future graduates for the first 1-3 years of their career.

Business in London is booming. Fears of the relocation of key financial institutions are still rife within the industry, with sensationalist headlines frequently dominating top media publications.

Brexit’s impact on recruitment in the City of London

You could forgive those looking to enter the industry hearing this tale of woe and turning in droves to the continent, but the results of our Gen Z hiring report reveal the exact opposite. A whopping 84% of participants still ranked London as their top location of choice after graduation.

Recently the French finance minister predicted that Paris would overtake London as the European banking capital in a few short years, but in our recent survey, Paris and Frankfurt were favoured just 4% and 2% respectively by graduates.

London is still very much the place that European candidates want to base themselves and would see themselves for the next one to three years.

Since the vote passed, critics have predicted that London’s financial district will be hit hard by Brexit, but there has been no evidence of a mass exodus. If anything, hiring at a graduate level has accelerated.

The rise in graduate jobs

Demand from traditional avenues such as banking and consultancies has increased, and we are now also seeing far more graduate hiring into private equity and hedge funds. This hasn’t been the case for the last decade.

In the 2018 graduate season, we saw an unprecedented number of applicants going through an interview process, having already accepted another offer. We’re in a candidate short market and top class graduates are wise to the fact that they’re a hot commodity.

Our Gen Z hiring report found that 70% of participants acknowledged that they would keep an eye out for other opportunities after accepting another job offer.

There is no denying that junior hiring is the only sure-fire way to ensure a steady flow of talented individuals through your talent pipeline and more needs to be done to ensure you’re the company of choice.

While it appears that you don’t have to worry about losing the best and brightest to the continent just yet, by delivering a market leading candidate experience you can ensure you’re set to weather any storm that comes your way and safeguard the success of your business.