EY has been drastically increasing its graduate recruitment in the U.S.

EY is making an aggressive play to beat the other Big Four professional services firms, financial services firms and other industries to talent coming out of U.S. universities and has increased its target for intern and graduate recruits this year.

During the fiscal year that closed out on June 30, EY made 13,000 campus hires in the Americas, 10,000 of which were in the U.S. There were more than 40,000 applicants for those positions in the U.S. EY hired approximately 4,500 interns and 5,500 full-time hires nationwide. The large majority of the other 3,000 hires across Canada, Central America and South America were full-time campus hires.

Approximately 65% to 70% of the 5,500 full-time hires in the U.S. were former interns.

“We have seen tremendous growth in campus recruitment over the last two-to-three years, with double-digit-percent increases to our hiring goals over the last two years – from fiscal-year 2014 to 2015 we made a 24% increase in our hiring goals,” said Natasha Stough, Americas director of campus recruiting at EY. “That has absolutely equated to more opportunities for students coming out of great [university] programs – we’ve really seen a lot of growth in the last two years.

“We’re still expecting to hire a similar number during the current fiscal year,” she said. “The early indications are that we’ll still be hovering around that 10k mark [for fiscal-year 2017],' she says. “It’s been an amazing couple of years to be able to go to campuses and hire these numbers of interns and graduates – four years ago we were hiring around 6,000 per year.”

EY campus recruitment

Stough said that EY is seeing an increase in its needs for the tax practice, with the transactions/M&A group seeing some growth as well. While its assurance and advisory practices have grown significantly over the past few years, she projects that to level off considerably from past double-digit-percentage increases, although the firm is still hiring for both of those practices.

“Our overall campus recruiting strategy continues to evolve in part due to the competitive nature that we’re operating under for top talent on campus,” Stough said.

EY begins sourcing candidates eight-to-12 months in advance of their start date.

“If you look at the U.S recruitment model, we source a large number of our full-time hires through the internship program,” Stough said. “The pipeline to hire those 10k is fairly broad across the U.S. from a sourcing standpoint, including career fairs, information sessions and different events on campus.”

EY converts a large majority of interns to join the firm full-time after graduation. About 95% of interns get offers, and EY converts 92% to 95% of those into full-time employees.

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