The RateMyPlacement Top 5 Tips...

Top 5 tips to becoming more enterprising whilst on work placement...

1. Seek challenges… whether it be more complex or difficult assignments or expanding the breadth of your work to source new opportunities, it’s essential to push yourself
2. Leave your comfort zone… it’s very easy to maintain status quo, if succeeding was easy, everyone would succeed, so try and push your boundaries
3. Network, network, network… Try and get to know as many people as possible, you never know who will be able to help you out in the future
4. Be the first one at your desk… Not only will you have more time to complete your ‘work’, but perception is everything and appearing motivated, keen and enthusiastic are highly employable traits in a student!
5. Challenge ideas occasionally… if you see a plan or strategy being put together and you think it could be done slightly differently, then say so. Your creativity and initiative will be much appreciated even if the first idea is used.

Top 5 tips to being unenterprising whilst on work placement...!

1. Shy away from responsibility… and let someone else play the major part in a project you could potentially run
2. Ignore opportunities… pretending you’re “snowed under at the moment” is always a good way to shirk opportunities!
3. Spend all day on Facebook… catching up with mates and uploading photos of last night definitely won’t impress many people!
4. Turn up frequentley late and hungover… a sure fire way to ensure you won’t be welcomed back as a graduate.
5. Leave dead on 5 o’clock and get in the pub… You aren’t paid beyond then so why should you be there?

Top 5 enterprising accessories!

1. Laptop… probably the most essential accessory for remote workers. At RateMyPlacement we all work remotely so we’re usually never in the same place two days in a row – making a laptop high priority!
2. WiFi dongle… goes hand in hand with the importance of a laptop! Allows connection to the internet when travelling in cars and on trains – which, with over 100 uni’s spread all across the country, we find very useful!
3. BlackBerry… Amanda Jones from Red Button Design claims it’s never too far away and the BlackBerry has to be one of the more fashionable and effective methods of keeping up to date and on top of everything. Not only is it a mobile phone, it receives and sends emails too… mental.
4. Google Applications… Google have everything for small businesses. From Google mail, to calendars to document storage systems to ensure you can access and store everything you need to in ‘the cloud’!
5. Alarm clock… it’s amazing how much time there is in the day if you can get up early! Here’s a blog post about some amazing alarm clocks!