The battle to attract new talent has taken a fresh twist, an MBA student project competition at Cass Business School, in London, has revealed.

Pressing the usual buttons — high starting salary, benefits and a pension — just does not cut it any more. Companies are finding it ever harder to attract and retain a new generation whose values and expectations are radically different from those of previous generations.

The Cass competition was the culmination of a new elective course, managing professional services firms. Projects were judged by a panel including senior partners from the elective’s sponsor, BDO Stoy Hayward, the accountancy, tax and business adviser, which gave a small cash prize for the best presentation.

The competition is part of a determined effort to shake up end-of-course assessment. Professor Laura Empson, the elective’s tutor, explains: “It is not enough for business schools to pay lip service to Generation Y. Students found our X Factor-style competition a whole lot more interesting than a written dissertation and it gave groups the opportunity to showcase their presentation skills. They also gained an awful lot of value from being put on the spot by being asked challenging questions by a panel of senior figures in the sector. Two hours of their time was worth infinitely more than the prize on offer.”

The students, who were assigned to find out “how professional services firms can win the war for talent and recruit the best”, zeroed in on Gen Y. They surveyed 40 Gen Y graduates aged up to 28 and interviewed 20 City firms ranging from accountancy and law practices to marketing and brand management consultancies.

Katherine Kern, 27, an American student, was shocked by the indifference she found among the sample of employers. “If they want to keep their graduates in the long term, they need to be more in tune with their expectations,” she says.

Kern is finishing an internship with Interbrand, the London-based global brand management consultancy, and will start work there when she completes her MBA. “It’s a young company and very open,” she says. “If anyone says, ‘I like the company, I like my clients but I’m not happy in my role’, it will help to develop them — sending them to New York or Madrid to give them more experience.”

Sushmita Dutta, 35, an MBA student from India, observed that Gen Y did not subscribe to the City’s culture of long hours: “We found that Gen Y was demanding a better work-life balance. It is prepared to work harder and get a lot of work done but in a shorter space of time.”

Some employers polled by the students scored high on Gen Y concerns. McKinsey, the management consulting firm, 48th on the list, and a number of magic circle law firms, for example, were willing to offer flexible hours to attract and retain talent.

Partly as a result of its involvement with Cass, BDO Stoy Hayward is introducing two schemes to attract and retain Gen Y — a programme of corporate social responsibility community volunteering and a mid-career break of six to nine months.

A member of the judging panel, Bill Knight, a retired senior partner from the law firm Simmons & Simmons, says: “The most important message Gen Y is telling us is, ‘Respect us. We have come to work. We’re young, we’re enthusiastic and we have plenty of stamina, so involve us’. ”

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