It’s been a long week for the RateMyPlacement team… Last Sunday, we packed up the car and made the journey west along the M4 to the superb Celtic Manor (home of the 2010 Ryder Cup) in Newport, Wales for the 2009 Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) Conference.

This year we decided to firmly put ourselves on the map and booked an exhibition stand. After much deliberating over what theme we’d go with, we decided on a two-seater arcade racing machine – Battle Gear 3! The arcade went down well with the delegates and the battle to reach the top of our ‘Top Gear’ style leaderboard was intense. Congratulations to Chris Griffiths from CIMA who took top spot and a bottle of champagne! We were even lucky enough to be visited by The Stig on the Tuesday who was happy to race anyone who dared challenge him!

Aside from the arcade, late nights and probably a bit too much free wine at the Awards evening – the conference was a great success. The seminars and workshops provided us with some great insights into the challenges that graduate recruiters face and it was great to meet many clients and future clients over the course of the 3 days.

The Conference also coincided with the release of the latest results from the AGR Summer Survey 2009. Whilst the results don’t make great reading for this summer’s graduates, I think there was definitely a positive feeling amongst the attendees of the Conference that things will of course improve. As always, the good news for first and second year students is that you still have time to get some relevant work experience before you graduate and put yourself in the strongest position possible to secure a good graduate job.

To find out more about the AGR Conference, visit the AGR website.