Well it’s not everyday you make an appearance in the Financial Times! The FT have just done a two-page spread about how RateMyPlacement.co.uk can help the country overcome the ‘credit card crunch’ (as Ricky Hatton amusingly called it on Sky Sports News earlier)…

OK I’m joking, but we were featured in an article entitled  “The upside of a banking fallout”  in Tuesday’s Graduate Recruitment supplement, talking about the impact of the current economic crisis on student’s and graduates.

Overall the article is a positive one for students and graduates - whilst the outlook for those interested in banking is looking fairly bleak at the moment, other industries and disciplines are benefiting from this. One thing’s for sure - there’s always going to be a requirement for talented students and graduates - which again emphasises the benefits of doing a work placement or internship. Get yourself the relevant work experience that graduate employers are looking for, and put yourself ahead of the competition in an increasingly competitive playing field.

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Over the next 12 months, we’re going to be following a number of students as they either embark on the search for their dream work placement, or are actually on their placement now.

We’ve currently got 5 students who have agreed to keep us updated with what they’re up to, click here to read more about them. We’ll be following them through the trials and tribulations of applications, interviews and assessment centres; as well as finding out what life on placement is really like.

In our first Blog article, we meet the five and they tell us a bit more about themselves and what they’re up to this year. Be sure to check back soon as we’ll be trying to add new posts regularly.

Click here to read the latest from our Guest Blog.

Fancy becoming one of our guest bloggers? We’re looking for students who are in their second year and have just started the search for a placement, or those students who are on placement this year. E-mail us here if you’re interested.

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Want to know the top provider of Placements and Internship according to your peers? Well according to the reviews on RateMyPlacement congratulations go to Samworth Brothers who are our Top Employer 2008.

Samworth Brothers, who have an average rating of 9.0 from 11 reviews, beat off tough competition for BAE Systems Submarine Solutions (8.7) and Accenture (8.5). Other mentions go to HP who achieved an exceptionally high average of 7.5 across 27 reviews, and Jagex (8.2) and ProspectSoft (8.1) who were the top 2 SMEs on our list.

The Top 20 Employers 2008 are based on reviews from student’s who have completed their placement in either 2007 or 2008. For the rest of this year, the Top 20 will only feature reviews from students who started their placement / internships in 2007 and 2008.

See the full RateMyPlacement Top 20 Employers of 2008 table here.

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September 30th sees another landmark for RateMyPlacement; no, its not that Oliver has lost the final hair on his head, Ali hasn’t been officially classed as a midget and Chris hasn’t become the major shareholder in Party Rings. Instead it’s a year since we had our first employer advertising on the site, and RateMyPlacement made it’s first revenue!

October 1st 2007 was the date we “relaunched” the website from being a Loughborough Business School review database, to a national website allowing companies to advertise their schemes alongside our unique student generated reviews. Now, heading into the new academic year with 2.6 full time employees we aim to raise the awareness of the website to as many students following in our footsteps.

Below are the stats that sum up the past year:

8,085: Hairs lost by Oliver since RateMyPlacement launched

5,121: Number of registered members

4,682: Total miles on Oliver’s car in the last 3 months

£3,348: Amount given away to students in prizes and incentives

829: Total number of reviews

507: Party Rings eaten by Chris since launch

104: Universities with students who have registered on RateMyPlacement

88%: percentage of reviews rated 6.0 / 10 or above

86: Number of meetings we have attended in the last year

85: Facial hairs grown by Chris since RateMyPlacement launched

36: Universities met in the last 3 months

34: Wrong turnings in the last 3 months

32: Highest number of reviews we had in one day

21: Petty arguments caused by spending too much time with Sid in last 3 months

18: Companies who have advertised with us in 2007/2008

9.0 / 10: Average score of our higest rated employer, Samworth Brothers

5′1″: Height of Ali

1.7: Lowest rated review

It’s been a cracking year, with loads of highs (and a few lows!) along the way. We’ve come a long way since meeting up in Loughborough Uni Library all those months ago, and can’t wait to find out what the next year has in store for us….

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What’s new then?

We’ve been working hard over the past few months designing, developing and testing the new-look RateMyPlacement.co.uk. As you can see, the new website brings a sleeker, cleaner and easier to navigate design, with a host of new features.

But RateMyPlacement was already great - why the need to improve it?

There’s always room for improvement! The ‘old’ design had been in place since March 2007 when we initially launched the website to Loughborough Uni students and since then we’ve been bolting bits and pieces on. We felt it was time bring the website fully up-to-date for the new academic year, refreshing the design and incorporating some important new features.

Is that all you’re doing?

This is really just the start of a whole range of improvements and new features that we’re going to be adding over the next few months. Whilst we are already confident that the website is the number one online resource for students, universities and employers involved in work placements and internships, we believe there are many more areas in which we could improve the website for you. These include enhancing the community aspect of the website, allowing more students to interact and share ideas and discussions around everything to do with all aspects of work experience.

If you have any comments or feedback about the site we would love to hear them, we are all ears.

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We’ve recently teamed up with a number of other student-focused websites to bring you CampusTricks.com - the top 10 websites that you’ll need if you’re a student!

Alongside ourselves, the other websites involved are:

• Studentgems.com - Use your skills to earn money
• TheStudentRoom.co.uk - The UK’s largest student community
• Beyondbakedbeans.com - Cheap, easy recipes and tips
• Taxdoctor.co.uk - Turn overpaid tax into cash
• Liveout.co.uk - Find your perfect student house
• Groupspaces.com - Manage your club or society
• Wealthystudent.co.uk - Ultimate online student money bible
• Studentbeans.com - 2-for-1 cinema tickets, meal deals & more

To find out more, visit CampusTricks.com.

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Last week Oliver and I were invited to attend the Southern regional final of the O2 X Awards. The Awards are designed to “recognise success and vision within the world of small business.” We entered the competition back in August, and were delighted to find out that we’d been chosen as a finalist for the southern region out of hundreds of entrants.

The regional final took place at a posh hotel in Knightsbridge, with complimentary beer, wine and canapees - always goes down well with the RateMyPlacement team! We had around 15 minutes with the judges - a representative from O2 and the editor of Shortlist magazine. Our short time with them seemed go well, so fingers crossed. We should find out in the next couple of weeks if we’ve made it through to the national final and are in with a chance of winning the £10,000 top prize!

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Once again, the RateMyPlacement team is feeling ever so generous and has decided to give away yet more vouchers for HMV.co.uk!

That’s right, we’ve got another £1,000 worth of HMV vouchers to give away to students submitting a review of their placement or internship on RateMyPlacement.

That will take the total that we’ve given away to an amazing £3,500 to students throughout the UK. All you need to do to earn yourself up to £10 in HMV vouchers is to submit a review of your placement or internship with additional comments.

But hurry - once they’re gone, they really are gone! So submit your review today to earn yourself some vouchers!

 Click here to find out more, or here to submit your review today.

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A 10 minute drive across the city brought us to Newcastle University. We had another really positive meeting with the Careers department and hopefully we can work closely alongside another traditionally research focused uni to assist them raise the awareness of work experience.

After our quiet couple of beers in Leeds we were fully ready for a big night out on the Toon! We stayed with one of Ollie’s sisters friends who’s at uni in Newcastle and she was keen to show two strapping older men the delights of Newcastle! She took us to some quality bars, some impressively smelly and dingy student bars and we ended up in the Blu Bambu nightclub til the early hours… A really good night!

The RateMyPlacement rating for Newcastle University:

- Weather = 7 / 10 – Warmly overcast
- Grounds = 9 / 10 – Some lovely old architecture, but some building works prevented the full 10 / 10
- Beer = 10 / 10 – Top notch, good prices and a great night out!
- Bird watching = 8 / 10 – Newcastle definitely did not disappoint, and lived up to it’s reputation for some top bird watching!
- The “pot-noodle test” = 3 / 10 – we forgot to check but the pub next door had a lovely bit of gammon

- Newcastle University Grand Total = 37 / 50

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