About RateMyPlacement

• Meet the RMP Team

The RMP Story…

RateMyPlacement.co.uk specialises in the growing demand for work experience and employability skills amongst students, universities and employers. Graduate recruiters consistently cite experience and work-based skills as the number one thing they look for in potential graduate recruits – and a placement year or summer internship is the ideal way for a student to gain the experience and skills they need.

As you may have spotted, there are two main aspects to this website – the student-generated reviews on their placement and internship experiences, which provide undergraduates with an unrivalled independent insight into life on placement or internship; and the corporate profiles and vacancy listings that run alongside the reviews. Alongside this, we also provide a wealth of advice and information specifically for undergraduates to help them in their search for a placement or internship.

Our Mission Is…

• To provide undergraduates with an unrivalled resource of unique peer-to-peer information, ensuring they are making informed and correct career decisions
• To provide undergraduates from all backgrounds and universities with access to paid placement and internship opportunities across the UK
• To work closely with university placement & careers advisers, improving their knowledge of the undergraduate opportunities that they promote to their students, which will in turn improve the service that they can offer to them.
• To continue to build and develop a wide portfolio of tools and services and a complete online ‘market-place’ that will allow recruiters to engage with and attract talented students to their organisations.
• We are committed to raising awareness of the benefits of gaining relevant work experience for students in the UK and are constantly encouraging employers of all shapes and sizes to open up opportunities for undergraduates.

So that’s what we do. How did we get here?

The idea for RateMyPlacement was borne out of our own experiences whilst on placements and internships back in 2006. The conclusion of one particularly unproductive afternoon was that there wasn’t enough information out there for us when we were researching the placement and internship opportunities available. And wouldn’t it have been great if we could have spoken to our placement predecessors’ to find out what life was really like on placement…

Upon returning to Loughborough University for our final year, we hooked up with our expert web designer, fellow Loughborough graduate Andy Higgs (http://higgsdesign.com) and started the ball rolling to get the very first RateMyPlacement.co.uk up and running. After discussing the idea with our friends, family and university staff, we decided to pool some of our student loans and give it a go – a welcome distraction from our final year studies! The initial RateMyPlacement site first went live in March 2007 to Loughborough University students…

Getting started…

Within a few weeks, the website had received 100 reviews with over 500 members and we started to see visitors using the website from universities across the UK. During this period of early growth, we worked hard on starting to develop relationships with university placement officers, presenting at the 2007 PlaceNet Conference, and shortly before we graduated from Loughborough, we won the University Business Plan Competition which gave us £1,500 to reinvest back into the business.

Developing the business…

I would love to say that we followed the text book advice and drew up an extensive business plan for RateMyPlacement. In fact, the commercial aspect was something that evolved after the initial website was up and running. As the website started to attract more and more visitors and we assessed the online market for undergraduates, it became increasingly obvious that there was a potential for this to develop into a commercial venture.

Using the money won in the Business Plan Competition, we developed the initial 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. Somehow, we managed to land ourselves meetings with graduate recruiters at both PwC and Accenture no-less, who went on to become our first two clients, followed by Logica and IBM. We are very grateful to these companies for their early support and it’s no surprise that these companies do so well in attracting the top student talent.

Continued growth and a run in with Peter Jones!

After graduation in July 2007, the website was generating a small amount of revenue that was quickly reinvested back into website developments so the three of us entered into our own graduate jobs, continuing to work on RateMyPlacement during evenings, weekends (and secretly during the day where possible!). 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 himself. Unfortunately, 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 the 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!

2008-2009… Hard Work, Right Place, Right Time

Despite resigning from our safe, secure, well-paid graduate jobs during the worst recession since World War II, we quickly set about our task of raising the profile of RateMyPlacement amongst students, universities and of course, potential clients.

From a student perspective, the need to acquire relevant work experience and employability skills before graduating has never been greater. From an employer perspective, the race for the top graduate talent has meant an increasing focus on engaging with and attracting undergraduates earlier and earlier in their university careers. RateMyPlacement facilitates both of these growing emphasis’ and this has been a key reason for our growth.

With the help of our first employee, Cara Redford, we began to rapidly increase our on-campus presence, the number of students using the website and our client-base – all achieved whilst working from our home offices, spending many an hour sat working in each other’s flats!

2010 – Huge growth!

2010 was the year that the business truly evolved from a promising website into a fully-fledged, profit generating organisation. We kicked the year off with the inaugural National Placement & Internship Awards, held at Oxford Brookes University and shortly after this event, we took the big step of moving into our first office in London Victoria. Having a home meant we could expand the team and by the start of the 2010-11 campaign, we were up to a full-time team of 9, including 3 graduates and 3 of our very own placement students!

The 2010-11 campaign also saw the release of our first publication, ‘A Students’ Guide to the Top 20 Placement & Internship Employers’. Between September and the end of 2010, our newly formed team hit over 100 university fresher’s and careers fairs, signing up an amazing 25,000 students on their travels! At the same time, our client base rose rapidly to pass 150 companies of all shapes and sizes.

2011 – The empire grows & the Barclays win!

2011 started with our second National Placement & Internship Awards which were a resounding success, held at Cass Business School with over 200 attendees. The day also saw the launch of the latest arm of the RMP portfolio, On-Campus Promotions.

With student traffic, sign ups and revenue doubling year-on-year, 2011 has seen the business go through another period of massive growth, including moving to new, larger premises on the Albert Embankment in central London. As of the start of the 2011-12 campaign, the team is up to 13 full-timers, working across sales, marketing and the design/tech side of things. (You can meet them all by clicking here!)

In July 2011, we were also named London winners of the ‘Barclays Take One Small Step’ competition. After being selected out of 1,800 business entries for London alone, we reached the final 3. The race was then on for a four week period for each finalist to gain as many public votes as possible. After many hours of hard work and canvassing (with a particular big thanks to Sam Edmunds, one of our first placement students), we were named winners at a glitzy bash in London and took home the prize cheque of £50,000 for the business. This was an amazing achievement and the night was celebrated accordingly!!

With RateMyPlacement now well established as the go-to website for undergraduate placements and internships and On-Campus Promotions building up a great deal of momentum, as well as the release of ‘A Students’ Guide to the Top 50 Placement & Internship Employers’ and our third Awards in planning, the 2011-12 campaign is set to be another exciting period for the business!

Thanks for reading this far – we hope you’ve enjoyed our story so far and we’re always keen to hear from our visitors, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

The Boring Stuff (if you’re still reading this far, well played)

RMP Enterprise Ltd is a company limited by shares, registered in England & Wales with Company Number 6331665 and we are based at our awesome office in London – RMP Enterprise, 22-26 Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7TJ.