Company details

Wellington, NZ

HEADCOUNT

3000-9999

ORG TYPE

Corporate

SECTOR

Technology & Digital

WEBSITE

https://www.xero.com

About the company

Xero is a cloud accounting platform used by small businesses and by accountants and bookkeepers who support them. Xero’s products cover core accounting workflows like invoicing, bank feeds, reporting, and payroll integrations, sold on a subscription model. Xero operates globally, with major product and customer teams spread across New Zealand, Australia, the UK, North America, Asia, and South Africa. Xero is publicly listed and headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand.

Locations and presence

Xero has offices across seven countries, with major hubs including Wellington (HQ), Auckland, Melbourne, Manchester, Toronto, and Denver, plus offices in places like London, Milton Keynes, Singapore, and Cape Town. Xero promotes flexible working (remote, hybrid, and adjusted hours), including a “Work from Anywhere” option for temporary work outside a contracted location for up to 90 days in a rolling 12-month period.

Palpable Score

74.1

/ 100

Xero is a strong option for early-career candidates who want a structured, tech-focused pathway with a permanent job from day one and a clear transition into an associate role after the programme. Xero also shares some unusually candidate-friendly practices for grads, like not using CVs for initial screening and accepting applicants who are self-taught or bootcamp-trained. The biggest constraint is consistency: outside early-career programmes, hiring stages vary by team and candidate reports include occasional slow follow-up or ghosting.

Pillar 1: Early-career access

Score

16.5

/ 20

The company runs a 12-month graduate programme across engineering, security, analysis, security engineering, and data science, with permanent full-time employment from day one.
Xero offers structured student internships including a 12-month Xcelerate placement and a 3-month summer engineering internship, both designed for penultimate-year students.
The company concentrates early-career access heavily into technical and data disciplines, with fewer visible programme-style entry routes for non-technical careers.

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Pillar 2: Hiring fairness and transparency

Score

13.8

/ 20

The company states that CVs are not used for initial screening for the grad or intern programme and are used mainly to verify eligibility, which reduces “CV keyword” bias.
Xero uses common, predictable assessment tools for technical grads (including a HackerRank test for many technical roles), giving candidates a clear idea of the skills being checked.
The company’s general careers FAQ says interview stages vary by team, and candidate reports include occasional long delays or ghosting, which weakens the sense of a consistent, transparent process.

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Pillar 3: Learning and support

Score

17.0

/ 20

The company builds in structured learning during the graduate programme, including GradLab power-skills training and discipline-specific technical training.
Xero describes hands-on support for interns through a people lead, buddy, and team lead, with continuous feedback and learning opportunities through the placement year.
The company provides broad mentoring infrastructure such as company-wide access to a mentoring platform, but early-career support outside the named programmes is less clearly standardised in public materials.

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Pillar 4: Pay fairness and stability

Score

13.8

/ 20

The company offers stability signals for grads by hiring as permanent employees from day one and describing a guaranteed permanent position after completing the graduate programme.
Xero includes meaningful, widely available benefits like an employee share plan (a percentage of base salary in shares), medical insurance, retirement contributions, and wellbeing support including EAP-style services.
The company does not consistently publish salary ranges on many roles and programme pages, so pay transparency is weaker than the benefits narrative.

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Pillar 5: Early-career outcomes

Score

13.0

/ 20

The company links early-career pathways to concrete next steps, including transitioning graduates into associate roles at the end of the 12-month programme and describing potential return offers for some internship routes.
Xero has mixed overall employee sentiment on major review platforms, with mid-range ratings and career-opportunity scores that suggest progression can be uneven depending on team and timing.
The company does not publish cohort outcomes like grad-to-associate conversion rates, internship-to-offer rates, or time-to-promotion benchmarks, which limits confidence about typical progression speed.

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