Ernst & Young to hire 20,000 people in EMEIA in 2013

2012 was not the best year for banking and finance jobs. Tens of thousands of financial services jobs were lost (UBS alone has cutt several thousand people). But there are some bright spots. According to eFinanceCareers.com, Ernst & Young, one of the largest professional service firms in the world and one of the "Big Four" accounting firms, is hiring. Shirley Young, director of recruitment for Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) at Ernst & Young in an interview said that they are looking at hiring  10,500 new graduates in 2013:

"We hired over 10,500 last year, and expect that we will hire a broadly similar number this year.  In addition to this, we hired over 5,000 interns. Again, I would expect at least this number in 2013." - Source : Q&A: Shirley Young, director of Ernst & Young’s EMEIA hiring, says they’re looking for 10,500 graduates for 2013

According to Shirley Young, referrals from existing staff or alumni of Ernst & Young in EMEIA last financial year for experienced hires were over 28%. And these are only graduate hires. The company is also planning to hire almost 10,000 experienced staff:

Who will these 10,000 experienced staff be? And more to the point, might E&Y be interested in recruiting some ex-investment bankers? 

Shirley Jackson, global recruitment leader at E&Y, says 5,000 of the new hires will be for assurance services, which includes audit, accounting compliance and reporting and accounting advisory services. Within this area, new recruits will be directed particularly towards risk and performance management. “Heavy” recruitment is also expected for the advisory (consulting business). 

How many of the hires will be in London? Jackson declined to say. However, last month she suggested that E&Ys forthcoming recruitment would be particularly focused on Germany, Turkey and Africa.  

How many of the hires will be for financial services-related roles? Jackson declined to elaborate, but in early October E&Y was looking for people with a product control-type background for its wholesale banking performance improvement team. Right now, it’s also looking for a quantitative developer to provide quantitative risk modelling services to its financial services advisory business. - Source : Ernst & Young is actually hiring 20,000 people in EMEIA in 2013