The South African Graduate Employers Association has published the winners of its 2017 SAGEA Employer Awards, naming the companies most favoured by South African students across 24 sectors.
Now in their eighth year, The SAGEA Employer Awards celebrate the achievements of South Africa’s leading graduate employers. The awards are decided entirely by successful job hunters, who have received confirmed job offers from graduate employers.
The SAGEA Employer Awards 2017 have been developed as part of The SAGEA Candidate Insights Survey 2016. The survey was carried out on behalf of The South African Graduate Employers Association (SAGEA) by the specialist student and graduate research company, High Fliers Research Ltd.
Launched in 2010, the survey is conducted on an annual basis to help SAGEA members to review the success of their graduate campaigns and help plan their future recruitment programmes. Research took place from March to May 2017, using an online questionnaire and during this time 1,960 candidates responded.
Each participant was asked to name up to two organisations whom they felt had the best graduate programme in specific sectors or industry groups with which they were familiar. There were no lists of organisations to choose from – their responses were entirely unprompted – to help ensure that no preconceptions or assumptions were made regarding a predefined group of employers which candidates may associate with specific sectors. Survey participants were most likely to vote for specific organisations based on the programmes and roles available, the training & development, the overall reputation of the organisation or the appeal of the brand, product or services. The leading employer and two runners-up were recorded across 24 separate sectors and this formed the basis of The Graduate Employers of Choice 2017.
In the accountancy sector, PwC gained more than a fifth of the vote. Between them, Standard Bank, First National Bank and Nedbank gained more than three-fifths of the votes within the banking sector. The legal sector was very closely fought, with few votes separating the top three employers.
Three organisations secured first place in two different sectors: Sasol gained the most votes in both the chemical & pharmaceutical and engineering or industrial sectors, Unilever secured the FMCG and manufacturing sectors, while Discovery was in first place for both the health and insurance sectors.
