Banks' loss is accountants' gain

Scotland's banks have been particularly humbled by the global financial crisis, so it's no surprise that graduate talent is pursuing other options. The number of Scottish graduates shunning banking and instead looking to the Big Four accountancy firms has swelled this year.

Deloitte has reported an increase in applications for graduate positions at its Scottish business of 34%, with Edinburgh - the country's banking hub - witnessing a 59% spike in enquiries.

"A number of graduate recruiters have cut back on recruitment figures and, as a result, more students are competing for our positions than ever before," says Sarah Shillingford, graduate recruitment partner at Deloitte.

And Jim Boyle, talent partner for Deloitte in Scotland, reckons graduates who may have taken a gap year are instead getting their applications in now.

Deloitte hires around 1,000 students across the UK.

The Big Four firms recruit on a rolling basis, so the frenzied level of interest has led a record number of students to get their applications in early.

Stephen Isherwood, head of graduate recruitment at Ernst & Young, reckons it's still too early to say whether the number of applications is up on last year.

However, he says: "On the milkrounds, we've noticed a 100% increase in the number of people attending. A lot of the students have been very up-front and said they would have considered banking, but are now exploring what we have to offer."

Isherwood adds that graduates should expect it to be tougher to get a place this year, not because they have raised the benchmark, but simply because there are more people competing for the same number of positions.