About RateMyPlacement

RateMyPlacement.co.uk is the UK’s leading undergraduate resource for students, universities and employers involved in work placements and internships. The website and business has grown organically from an idea that came about between friends at Loughborough University (click here for the management team) whilst on our own placement years and internships in 2005–2006 and has since developed into a full-time business. It is this first hand knowledge of the placement process, aligned with our dedication to relevant content and information written by those that matter most (the students), 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 work placement experience.

The RateMyPlacement Story…

With a combination of late nights, early mornings and weekends, we have juggled launching and growing the business alongside our own work placements, our final years at university and full-time graduate jobs! In May 2008, we took the plunge, quit the day-jobs and RateMyPlacement.co.uk became a full-time, fully operating business.

The company now employs and supports four of us full-time with plans for continued growth into 2010.

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 few other websites dedicated to work placements or internships and no other websites that allowed students or interns to rate and review their experiences.

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 and set about making it happen.

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 (often a welcome break from coursework and revision!) so it was up to Andy to work his magic and turn the plans into the website you see before you (with about 12,325 developments, tweaks and improvements along the way!)

The Launch

The website went live for the first time on 12th March 2007 to our friends and other students at Loughborough; 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 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. We also won the Loughborough University Business Plan Competition which provided us with £1,500 to be reinvested back into the website.

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 would genuinely aid students whilst 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.

Using the money won in the Business Plan Competition, we developed the advertising elements of the website and set about contacting employers to inform them of the website and our services which could complement any student-reviews they may have. 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 attracting the top student talent.

Continued growth and a run in with Peter Jones!

After graduation in July 2007, we each entered into our own graduate jobs, working on RateMyPlacement during evenings, weekends (and, to be fair, during the day!). Things reached a turning point when we were named National Finalists in the inaugural HSBC Unipreneurs competition 2008. Held at the BAFTA Theatre in London, we were on stage in front of a live audience to face a grilling from a ‘celebrity’ judging panel including none other than the Dragon Peter Jones. We narrowly missed out on the top prize of £20,000 (which would have been rather nice!) but Peter Jones’ words did give us the encouragement and inspiration we felt we needed to resign from our graduate jobs and go for it.

So in May 2008, the three co-founders took the plunge and quit the day jobs. Since then, we’ve never looked back!

The 2008-09 campaign was our first full year of business and despite the worst recession since the Second World War, the website and business has gone from strength-to-strength. During the peak months, we were receiving 25,000 visitors and took our total number of clients to 70.

Today

The 2009-10 campaign has been a period of huge growth for the business.

In April 2009, we welcomed our first employee on board – Cara Redford – to look after the Student Marketing side of the business and Cara has helped us spread the word to universities throughout the country to the point that we are now receiving over 45,000 visitors per month

The number of clients using RateMyPlacement has risen to around 100 and in February 2010 we finally made the move to our very own brand-new office in London Victoria.

We are currently planning ahead for the 2010-11 campaign with a recruitment drive of our own! Three placement students are joining the team, along with a Digital Executive and New Business Development Executive… Exciting times for the business!

We are continually looking to improve and grow the website until it is the number one resource for all parties involved in work placements or internships. Please feel to contribute to RateMyPlacement by leaving a review of your work placement or internship, get involved in our Forum, 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 (if you’re still reading this far, thanks!)

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. Note that this is just our registered address – we are based in a lovely office at RateMyPlacement HQ, 52 Grosvenor Gardens, LONDON, SW1W 0AU.

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 a comprehensive and complete online ‘market-place’ where employers can engage with and attract a wide range of undergraduates from universities across the country.

We are committed to raising awareness of the benefits of work experience for students in the UK and are constantly encouraging employers of all shapes and sizes to open up opportunities for undergraduates.

For more information, please Contact Us.