Hostilities have resumed. The war for talent is back and this time it’s personal. No route is being left unexplored as the leading firms fight to attract the best trainees, whether they are university graduates, school leavers or apprentices. At the same time, the accountancy profession seems to be more popular than ever as a career choice, with firms sifting through tens of thousands of applications for a limited number of places on their training schemes.

According to Accountancy’s Top 75 survey, there are now 15,396 trainees going through the UK’s top firms, up by nearly 2,000 on last year’s survey, when there were 13,369 trainee contracts.

Having dipped immediately after the financial crisis in 2008, the number of trainees has been picking up since 2011, but had levelled out between 2012 and 2013. However, as reported by Accountancy last year (Bump up the trainees, March 2014), there was anecdotal evidence of an impending surge in trainee numbers, and that indeed proved to be the case during 2014.