One of the highly reputed accountancy firms in the world is Ernst & Young which is 5th largest recruiter in UK for graduates. Recently the firm made some changes to it’s policy and said that it has discontinued requiring a 2:1 and the equivalent of three B grades at A-level. Which means that the applicants will no longer have to fulfil the minimum requirement and the upper division.
Maggie Stillwell, The managing partner for talent told that the company would now turn to online assessments to ascertain the applicant’s ability.
She also said that “ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS WILL STILL BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT AND INDEED REMAIN AN IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION WHEN ASSESSING CANDIDATES AS A WHOLE, BUT WILL NO LONGER ACT AS A BARRIER TO GETTING A FOOT IN THE DOOR”
Maggie Stillwell also said Our own internal research of over 400 graduates found that screening students based on academic performance alone was too blunt an approach for recruitment. It found no evidence to conclude that previous success in higher education correlated with future success in subsequent professional qualifications undertaken.”
If this is accepted by all the companies then people from low background can get more exposure of big companies purely based on talent.