Rate My Placement

HSBC Unipreneurs Awards 2008 - designed to "find the face of young entrepreneurship in Britain" - and that face could be RateMyPlacement!

We have just been informed that we have been selected as one of the final 5 young businesses! The judges have selected us from hundreds of entries as one of the five most promising ‘unipreneurs’ and we are now just one step away from winning £20,000!

This is an amazing achievement for us, and we are obviously delighted to have reached the final. It is things like this that make the many, many hours of work late into the night and at weekends worthwhile.

The final takes place at a gala evening at the BAFTA theatre in London on April 23rd. The five National Finalists will be quizzed on-stage before a live audience, who will then vote for the business that has impressed them most – and name the winner of HSBC Unipreneurs 2008.

So it’s time to dust off the tuxedos (probably get them dry-cleaned too as I’m pretty sure the last time they were worn was our Graduation Ball at Uni!), prepare and practice our presentation skills, and go for it!

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Monday 12th March 2007 - a memorable day in the short history of RateMyPlacement - the day that www.ratemyplacement.co.uk was launched. Today is officially our first birthday!

Initially the website was just for the benefit of our friends and coursemates at Loughborough University, but we have come a long way since then! Today, students, universities and employers nationwide are now benefitting from RateMyPlacement.

So, to celebrate the occasion, we are going to reward one lucky student with a pound for every day that we’ve been up and running! That’s right, we’re giving away £365!

Competition now closed! Click here to see who won!

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Yesterday, Ali and I attended the semi-finals of the 2008 HSBC Unipreneur Awards, and here’s how the day went….

It was an early start for the both of us - suited and booted, we took on the rush hour commute to HSBC Tower in Canary Wharf. Armed with a selection of our promotional material, a laptop and all the RateMyPlacement chat you could ever want to hear, we got ourselves set up and awaited the judges arrival at 10am.

The judging panel consisted of (in the order we met them):

• Jamie Murray Wells, founder of Glasses Direct.
• Professor Robert Blackburn, Director, Small Business Research Centre, Kingston University.
• Jenny Little, Enterprise Editor of the Financial Mail on Sunday.
• Huw Morgan, Head of Business Banking at HSBC
• Dr. Lorna Collins, Director of Flying Start.
• Emma Crosby, presenter on Sky News.

The next two and a half hours were spent chatting with the judges about the website and our business. We were quizzed on our progress to date and plans for the future. All of the judges seemed genuinely interested and asked some great questions, and Ali and I were exhausted but buzzing come 12.30 when the judging ended.

Next up was a few photographs, a chance to chat to some of the other semi-finalists and a very corporate looking lunch, which as you’d expect, we took full advantage of!

I think Ali would agree when I say it was a great morning and excellent experience for us both, and one we both thoroughly enjoyed. We’ll find out in the next two to three weeks if we’ve progressed through to the Final and be in with a chance of picking up the £20,000 prize, so fingers crossed!

Click here to view photos from the day.

We’ll be sure to keep you updated!

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After recently beating off competition from hundreds of entrants to reach the Top 20 of the HSBC Unipreneurs Awards 2008 - we have just been informed that WE HAVE REACHED THE SEMI-FINALS!

We’re down to the final 10 entrants, and we now have to attend a judging day being held at HSBC Tower in Canary Wharf next Tuesday! The judges will have a difficult task on their hands as they have to select 5 finalists to go through to the grand final, which is held at BAFTA on April 23rd. The winner takes home £20,000 to put towards their business, so fingers crossed for RateMyPlacement!!

Be sure to check back and we’ll keep you updated on our progress…..

Click here to read about the Semi-final judging session, and here for photos of the event.

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We are delighted to announce that RateMyPlacement have been named in the Top 20 of the HSBC Unipreneurs Awards 2008. With hundreds of entries into the competition, we are thrilled to have reached the Top 20. The winners of the £20,000 first prize will be decided at a gala evening at BAFTA on April 23rd, when five finalists will be quizzed live on stage by a panel of experts about their businesses and why they deserve the first prize of £20,000.

HSBC Head of Business Banking, Huw Morgan, said; “There is a new breed of young businessmen and women who don’t plan to use a good education making money for someone else – we call them the Unipreneurs and are keen to support them. Their academic study has given them an awareness of structure and an appreciation of discipline.”

We’ll keep you updated on our progress! Visit the HSBC Unipreneurs website for more information.

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Click here to find out more!

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