Graduate jobs & schemes in Manchester 2025

The graduate job/scheme market is competitive in Manchester. But that doesn’t mean you won’t get into a graduate programme! If you take the right steps, you can boost your chances of getting a graduate job or getting on to a scheme.

You’ll want to apply in your final year of university and start looking as early as possible to boost your chances of getting on to one. We’re also here to help.

If you want to boost your skills further and make your applications stand out, try our free online learning tools – Pathways and GradSims .

Heaps of companies offer graduate programmes in Manchester including the NHS, KPMG, and Boohoo. Discover a range of graduate employers - with our dedicated guides you’ll learn more about the companies offering graduate roles, how to apply, and more.

There are different types of graduate programmes you can get on to in Manchester when you have a university degree.

You could get a graduate job - which is a full-time role within a company and usually unstructured with a shorter application process. Or you could get on to a graduate scheme – a structured training programme that typically would run between one to three years. Sectors include – but aren’t limited to – marketing, law, engineering, finance, IT, HR, and healthcare.

For example, a marketing graduate scheme would include rotations across different teams, so you gain experience in different marketing roles including digital, product, content, social media marketing, brand management, and market research. Whereas a marketing graduate job would likely be for a specific role within a sector – for example: graduate digital marketing executive.

There has been some research into average graduate salaries in Manchester, but we’d take these with a pinch of salt. It really does depend on things like the company, sector and role. For example, sectors like finance and law may offer bigger salaries and bonuses across their graduate jobs and schemes.

To help give you an idea, UK-wide, the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) found the average UK graduate salary was £35,170 in 2023.

The cost of living in Manchester can be reasonable compared some other major cities like London.

However, how expensive it is to live in Manchester really does depend on your own habits and preferences. You’ll need to factor in things like rental costs, utility bills, council tax and travel.

There are ways to save money on these things. For example, you could rent a room in a house slightly further out of the city and share or buddy up with friends instead of renting a whole house by yourself to help split the cost of rent and bills.