About RateMyPlacement
About RateMyPlacement
RateMyPlacement is a young student run website community that aims to make the lives of all parties involved in work placements or internships easier. This website has grown organically from an idea that came about between friends at Loughborough University (click here for the management team) whilst on our own industrial placement years in 2005/2006. It is this first hand knowledge of the work placement process that has allowed us to identify and fill a gap in the market, and understand the needs of our users.
Whether you’re a student, placement/careers officer or employer of placements students we aim to help you make the most of the placement year experience.
The RateMyPlacement Story
With a combination of late nights and early mornings we have juggled launching and running the website alongside our own work placements, our final years at university and full time graduate jobs!
The Idea
The idea of RateMyPlacement was born over a few emails that were flying around whilst we were on our work placements. We found ourselves asking each other:
“If you could reapply, would you have applied for the same jobs knowing what you do now?”
After some research we found there were very few other websites dedicated to work placements or internships and there was certainly not any website that asked for student reviews.
The hardest part of bringing RateMyPlacement to life was deciding whether it was worth turning the idea into a reality. Is anyone going to bother using it? What happens if we are sued by a company who has been given a bad review by a student? Can we afford it on top of our already growing debt? After testing the idea out on our friends and Tricia Tape, the Loughborough University Placement Officer, we decided the idea may actually be useful to Loughborough students.
Getting Started
The idea began to become reality after we met our website designer, Andy Higgs and were given a small amount of funding from friends and family. We had already extensively mapped out how we wished the website to look, feel and work so it was up to Andy to work his magic and turn the plans into the website that largely remains the same as it is today.
The Launch
We launched RateMyPlacement on 12th March 2007 to our friends and other students at Loughborough; and within a week we had 50 reviews and 300 members.
Unexpected Growth
As website traffic began to grow, we started attracting visitors from universities across the country, and were contacted by placement officers at other universities asking what the website was all about. Our really big break came when we were invited to present at the 2007 PlaceNet (the network of UK placement officers) annual conference; this exposure meant placement officers started promoting us to their students at universities nationwide.
The Business
The commercial potential of RateMyPlacement was not something that we initially considered to any great depths. We were happy to have developed something that looked could genuinely aid students, and also look good on our CV’s when it came to our own graduate employment. It became increasingly obvious, however, that if you are able to attract a high volume of students to the website, the advertising potential is there. We came up with the idea of offering employers the chance to have a presence on the website and advertise their vacancies, which complimented their reviews. The first companies who took a chance on us were PricewaterhouseCoopers and Accenture, who we met with and were able to demonstrate the potential of the website. We are very grateful to both these companies for their early support and it’s no surprise that these two companies do so well in the Top Graduate Recruiters Guide.
Continued growth
We are working very hard on growing all aspects of our business; whether marketing to students, attracting more companies to use our services or increasing the content on the website. We also have been featured in several pieces of national press and been to many events all of which have helped raise our profile. We have recently been named National Finalists in the HSBC Unipreneurs Award 2008!
The Future
2008 looks set to be a huge year for RateMyPlacement. We are looking to continually improve and grow the website until it is the number one resource for all parties involved in work placements or internships. In 2008 we are going to really build on the community aspect of the website; we want to offer students a self-populating resource where they can gather important information on all aspects of what is undoubtedly one of the most important experiences in a student’s career development. Please feel to contribute to RateMyPlacement by leaving a review of your work placement or internship, (you can also earn up to £10 HMV vouchers in the process!), comment on our Blog, and read our advice pages. As always, we are keen to hear your feedback so please don’t hesitate to Contact Us.
The Boring Stuff
R M P Enterprise Ltd is a company limited by shares, registered in England & Wales with Company Number 6331665. The registered office is 1 Franchise Street, Kidderminster, DY11 6RE, England.
Our Mission
RateMyPlacement is first and foremost dedicated to improving the experiences of students whilst on placement. Our goals are to:
• Provide a wealth of peer-to-peer information directly from students that have completed placements.
• Work alongside placement offices and staff at universities, improving their knowledge of the placements they offer, which will in turn improve the service that they can offer to their students.
• Build relationships with employers through the services we can offer them, ultimately aiming to improve their placement schemes, which will in turn benefit the students and employers alike.
