Celebrating the best: all the winners of the 2010 TARGETjobs awards

The sixth TARGETjobs National Graduate Recruitment Awards, held at London's Grosvenor House on the evening of Thursday 18^th March, certainly succeeded in delivering all the "glitz, glamour and showbusiness" promised by GTI's UK CEO Paul Sissons in his welcoming speech.

Flanked by brief cameo appearances from the diminutive Ronnie Corbett, Radio 2 Breakfast Show host Chris Evans provided a masterclass in how to despatch no less than 29 different awards entertainingly while maintaining a brisk pace to the proceedings throughout.

Before the main business of the evening got under way, Paul Awcock of headline sponsor Aviva stressed the importance of connecting with today's graduates - the colleagues, leaders and customers of the future - despite the recession, while Helen Bird of media partner The Guardian claimed it was no surprise that forward-looking employers were still investing in the hiring of significant numbers of graduates.

Just one award was presented before dinner was served - the AGCAS award (for the outstanding contribution to developing employability and skills in the curriculum), which went to Enterprise Rent-A-Car.  Then it was over to Chris Evans to whip through the remaining 28, ably abetted by TARGETjobs business development manager Katrina Clark.

First up were the nineteen sector-specific awards, voted for by students via a national online poll conducted by trendence.  In order of presentation, these went to: Atkins (construction & engineering), Procter & Gamble (FMCG), Walt Disney (hospitality, leisure & tourism), Goldman Sachs (investment banking), Microsoft (IT & telecomms), British Airways (logistics & transport), BBC TV (media, publishing & printing), Balfour Beatty (quantity/building surveying), PricewaterhouseCoopers (accounting & professional services), HSBC (banking, insurance & financial services), Amnesty International (charity & not-for-profit), PricewaterhouseCoopers (consulting), Airbus (engineering, design & manufacture), Allen & Overy (law), Saatchi & Saatchi (marketing & advertising), Savills (property), NHS Graduate Schemes (public sector), Harrods (retail) and GlaxoSmithKline (scientific R&D).

The six student panel awards went, in order, to: Barclays Capital/Stafford Long (diversity), Accenture/work (internship/vacation programme), PricewaterhouseCoopers/ThirtyThree (on-campus innovation), Aviva/Penna TCS (student marketing campaign <50 graduates), Ernst & Young/SAS Design (student marketing campaign >50 graduates) and DHL Supply Chain/Pyramid Design (graduate recruitment website).

Then came two individual awards - the first, graduate employee of the year, going to Christiano Alberigo of IBM UK, while James Darley (director of graduate recruitment at Teach First) was presented with a special TARGETjobs award for his outstanding contribution to graduate recruitment.

Six organisations had been shortlisted for the night's final accolade - graduate employer of the year.  The hopeful half-dozen consisted of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, HSBC, IBM UK, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Teach First.  Joint runners-up Enterprise Rent-A-Car and IBM UK both ran the winners close, but in the event it was HSBC who took the top prize.

Ri5 adds its congratulations to all the night's winners, and its commiserations to all those who missed out.  (There's always another year, of course - and hopefully things will be looking a bit more bullish by then.)

With the evening's official business concluded, it was on to the charity casino (in aid of Kids Alive), the disco and - for others - back to the bar for further celebrations.

Additional coverage of the awards will be published in Saturday's Guardian (20^th March) and, in due course, posted on www.targetjobsawards.co.uk.