Big Four firms make it to the list of Australia's top 25 employers
LinkedIn has come out with its top 25 companies to work for in Australia, and the Big Four accounting and advisory firms all feature on the list. The financial services sector emerged as the most popular, with the top four all being occupied by banking and financial services institutions.
The list of top companies to work for is prepared for a number of major markets across the globe, and is based on four primary metrics to measure a firm’s popularity. The first is overall interest in the company, measured by the number of visits a firm’s LinkedIn page receives from outsiders.
The second is employee engagement, which examines how many outsiders view the profile of a company’s employees. Thirdly, LinkedIn records the number of applications received by a firm for each opening that it posts, in a bid to measure job demand at the firm. The last metric is employee retention, which is measured by the number of employees that remain at a firm for more than a year.
All of the Big Four accounting and advisory firms have made the top 25 this year, which corresponds with a drive to employ young talent in these organisations. Early this year, it came to light that the Big Four were cumulatively planning to hire more than 2,500 graduates across the first half of this year.
Engagement with these firms is a highly competitive process, helped along by the prestige and recently introduced comfort that the jobs bring with them. EY placed the lowest of the four on LinkedIn’s list – at 13th – although this might change for next year following its announcement in March this year that employees could potentially take as much as 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year in the future.
KPMG Australia was just ahead of EY, placing in 12th, while Deloitte and PwC made it to the top 10. Deloitte Australia placed in 8th, which can be attributed to a renewed focus in the firm on innovative human resources mechanisms, with the objective of becoming “the most inspiring firm to work with — for its people, its clients and its communities.”
PwC Australia, meanwhile, was the highest ranked accounting and advisory firm in the country in 6th place. Nevertheless, sixth position represents a dip for PwC, given that it has topped the entire list for two years in a row before this. The firm’s popularity is often attributed to its flexibility with employees considerations.
The top four positions on the list were all occupied by banks, namely the Westpac Group, National Australia Bank, ANZ and Commonwealth Bank in that order. Other big global names on LinkedIn’s list for Australia are Salesforce in 9th and global ecommerce giant Amazon in 10th.
