Team Prosple
We’d like to share some exciting updates to our Top 100 Graduate Employers™ Guide.
This blog outlines the changes in two parts:
- Part 1: Enhancements to the 2025 guide (launching August 2025)
- Part 2: The evolution to the 2026 guide (and what you need to do now)
After nearly a decade of publishing the guide, our extensive user research has found that students are seeking more targeted information aligned to their specific career interests.
Our enhanced 2025 guide introduces two key innovations:
1. Top employers by specific career path: We’ve moved beyond broad industries to over 40 specific career paths. For example, instead of just ‘engineering’, students can now find top employers across multiple engineering disciplines including civil, mechanical, biomedical and more. This enables students to more easily identify employers that best match their career aspirations.
2. Rankings based on student values: Students want to find employers that align with their personal priorities. We’ve introduced new rankings for attributes they value the most, including pay, overall satisfaction (best workplaces), career progression, training & development, work-life balance, and more.
To power these new, more detailed rankings, our methodology now places a greater emphasis on verified graduate and intern reviews. This peer-to-peer insight is what students trust most. Rankings will also continue to incorporate employer-submitted data and student application behaviour from the Prosple platform.
More specific details about the methodology can be viewed here:
Our 2025 guide is the most comprehensive and targeted version we’ve ever produced. Our online platform will also be overhauled to provide students with a similar experience.
2025 Timeline:
- Guide Distribution: July 2025 to universities nationwide.
- Employer Copies: All ranked employers will receive a complimentary hard copy from August onwards.
* * *Part 2: Looking ahead - 2026 guide
2026 rankings overview
1. Most sought-after (previously Top 100)
For 2026, we are introducing a revised version of our Top 100, which will be renamed Most sought-after.
The purpose of the Most sought-after ranking is to more accurately measure the strength of a graduate employer’s brand in the market.
The Most sought-after ranking methodology will be based on a new student brand appeal survey, in addition to application volumes (which formed the basis of our previous Top 100 rankings).
Our survey will ask university students across a range of study fields the following questions:
- Which employers in your field do you recognise?
- Are there other employers you know that we should include?
- How would you rank these employers in terms of where you’d most want to work?
We believe introducing our Most sought-after ranking will provide employers with more meaningful insights of how students perceive their brand’s appeal and attractiveness.
The Most sought-after ranking will be available both overall (across all career paths) and within each specific career path.
2. Top paying
The methodology here is unchanged from 2025. It shows the highest paying advertised full-time graduate roles over the last year in each career path.
3. Best workplaces
The methodology is largely unchanged from 2025 but employers who haven’t completed reviews in the last 12 months, or have too few reviews will appear lower in the rankings.
4. Best workplaces by category
As introduced in 2025, we will continue to publish best workplaces by category including career progression, training & development, work-life balance, and more.
5. Trending (online only)
This new online-only ranking identifies employers who are experiencing significant application growth, helping students spot emerging opportunities and market trends.
Publication of 2026 rankings online and in print
All rankings will be available online with a subset published in our print guide.
Please see a summary of our rankings below including methodology and where they will be available.
2026 Timeline
1. Data collection (September 1, 2024 - August 30, 2025): We’re currently in the data collection phase, and we’ve already sent unique graduate review links to employers. If you haven’t received your unique graduate review link for the 2026 data collection, please contact our customer success team immediately at hello@prosple.com. These reviews are essential for your inclusion in the various category rankings.
2. Rankings reveal (Early October 2025): In addition to our annual webinar (date TBC), we’ll contact you directly to share your rankings in the 2026 guide, giving you advance notice to prepare your marketing materials and internal communications.
All ranked employers will receive a tailored digital package including social media assets, badges, and media releases to help you celebrate and promote your achievements.
3. Guide publication (March 2026):The hardcover 2026 guide will be ready in time for the busy graduate recruitment season, ensuring maximum impact when students are making their career decisions.
Questions?
We understand these changes represent a significant shift in our Top 100 Graduate Employers™ Guide.