PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will launch a talent academy in the United Arab Emirates next year, with the aim of building relationships with promising students from the Middle East early in their university careers.

The three to four-day programme will be offered at the private American University of Dubai (AUD), according to Sonja Stockton, PwC’s director of talent acquisition in the UK. Stockton told Recruiter there was “huge interest” at AUD in “developing the employability of their students”, at a time when PwC’s business is experiencing significant growth in the Middle East.

“The business has ambitions to grow, therefore it has a need for strong talent pipelines, and we believe the earlier you build them, the stronger they become,” Stockton said. “We believe that developing that talent relationship should start early with them on campus not just when they come to work for you.”

She went on to say: “We would look for year one [students], although the university’s quite keen that we also extend to year two because there are so few internships and other opportunities for students.”

The addition of the talent academy would further accelerate PwC’s drive to bring newcomers into its Middle Eastern business. This year marked the first time that the Big Four firm has had a structured graduate recruitment programme in the Middle East. “They have been recruiting graduates across the Middle East for the last couple of years,” Stockton explained. However, the previous intake had involved small numbers of graduates from across the region “without a strategic recruitment approach or campaign” which was added in this year, she said.

Within two days of the first Middle Eastern graduate recruitment programme’s launch, 350 applications had been received. The number received to date was not available but PwC revealed that 31% of the applications have been from women, and 69% from men.

“The target for 2011 is to recruit for 50 graduate vacancies,” Stockton said. Last year, PwC recruited 35 graduates in the region and two years ago, just 12.

At the moment, Stockton said her work with AUD’s careers services staff was focusing on working out the details of the programme’s “cultural fit” at the university. “We want to make sure it fits, and is appropriate for their needs,” she said. For instance, the UK version of the programme is offered in residence, with participants of both genders living in the same building, an approach that would not be appropriate in the Middle East. “For that very reason,” she said, “they [students] would attend on a daily basis.”