How can you make the most of your long Summer breaks?

By improving your CV and gaining some excellent work experience on a placement or internship, that’s how!

The live chat on the Guardian yesterday on the 5th May saw several experts in the undergraduate market (we couldn’t be there!) discuss how important work experience is for students to improve their employability.  It was great to hear members of the panel refer to RateMyPlacement as the place to search for placements and internships.  A big thankyou goes out to Donna Miller at Enterprise Rent-A-Car who mentioned RateMyPlacement as her ‘favourite place for interns and placement schemes’.

Thanks Donna!  There are still opportunities available for all of you who are thinking about what to do over Summer.  Don’t let another Summer fly by with only a tan and an empty wallet to show for it….good luck!

For all the latest roles available visit RateMyPlacement.co.uk

The RateMyPlacement Team

Nick Clegg yesterday launched a new social mobility policy with an attack on the way internships go to “sharp elbowed” wealthy families….

Clegg however, secured an internship at a Finnish Bank unpaid before he attended Cambridge University. A spokesperson said it was through “family connections”, Mr Clegg’s father Nicholas.

I can’t help thinking this is a little hypocritical ? What are the general views on Clegg’s new policy? Will it actually change the current situation of only the wealthy and privileged students being able to benefit from unpaid internships? Surely employers must take note of this and give every student the opportunity to gain employability skills…we have several paid placements and internships on RateMyPlacement so let this be the start of a new transition in the market!

For more information on the story check out the article at www.thisislondon.co.uk

What does everyone think?   Comments please

It’s an exciting and sad time as many of you are approaching the end of your placements.  Our Guest Blogger at Trigger, Aaron updates us with his experiences so far.  Read onto find out what he has been up to in the past few months……

“Believe it or not, in the last few months I have been doing a lot of development work in several different areas of the business.

The main project that I have been working on for a while now is developing our own ‘wallboard’, well plural, we are going to have quite a few. We started out by using a website called Geckoboard. Geckoboard is a website which allows you to have dashboards which display information from various different systems etc in the form of widgets. Geckoboard comes with a lot of standard widgets which can be useful but some widgets are just not specific enough for our needs. I went straight in and started developing from scratch, a script which can be plugged into the Geckoboard to display pie charts, numbers, text etc from the systems we use. At the moment the company utilises many pieces of software to store information on projects, opportunities, invoices, support tickets and much more, but the stats from these are not being shown anywhere. My script allows you to pass a given format in and relevant attributes to support this format (depending on what is required for each).

As well as finishing up on the Geckoboard and getting the stats up on some large screens around the office, I am going to be doing some Flex shadowing and working with a few people around the office to increase my skills base. I will be on Support Development all the way to the end of my placement but have the opportunity to move away quite freely when required, for when I want to do Flex, for example, or my continuation with PHP. Within Trigger we have an application range which is for engagement purposes, I have slowly been taking over the setup etc of these from one of the QA managers who has been doing these for years now, there is lots of detail within the processes but learning of all of this is extremely beneficial to myself when/if I come back.

If you have any questions regarding my Geckoboard script or anything else you want to mention, go ahead and add a comment!

Will have a final couple of updates coming up shortly, as I am into my last few months within Trigger (The lucky people at Trigger have chosen to keep me on for an extra month though so my time has been extended). There will probably be one mid May after I come back from Tenerife and one at the end of my placement

You can find out more from Aaron, as well as our other Guest Bloggers over the coming year!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at Trigger?

The budget announced yesterday by the Government states that “100,000 young people will be offered work experience to reduce Britain’s escalating problem of youth unemployment”.

This is a great step in the right direction, however the real question surrounds how many students will be paid for their placements. There needs to be a greater movement towards paid placements and internships to prevent students from working months on end just to gain that little bit of experience to add to their CV. We can see that some industries are tougher to break into including Marketing, Advertising and PR but the debate around exploiting students in these sectors needs to be addressed!

The real issue is students need experience before they graduate! At RateMyPlacement, we believe that all students should have the equal opportunity to gain these essential employment skills – unpaid placements realistically cut out a significant number of students who are able to afford this opportunity so companies, it’s time to take action….

Read more from the article and news from the budget at www.guardian.co.uk/education/universityguide

As always, add your comments below

How do you fancy winning 4 tickets to Beach Break Live this summer?! Interested? Then read on to find out more…..

RateMyPlacement have teamed up with Beach Break Live to offer 4 tickets to the hottest student festival of the year. With a line up including Tinie Tempah, We Are Scientists and Professor Green, there is no better way to reward you and your friends this summer!

To enter our competition all you need to do is:

1. Go to our Facebook Fanpage at www.facebook.com/ratemyplacement

2. ‘Like’ our page

3. When we reach 2000 members, one of our fans will be rewarded with 4 Beach Break Live tickets, SIMPLE AS THAT!

Time is ticking so don’t miss out on this fantastic opportunity…just a few clicks and the tickets could be yours

For more information on BeachBreak Live this summer visit the website at

BeachBreakLive.com

Good luck !

The RateMyPlacement Team

How serious is youth unemployment?!  The CIPD’s latest Work Audit report on official labour market statistics (“Getting the measure of youth unemployment”) suggests that youth unemployment is actually running at around one in eight rather than one in five!

The new report published by the CIPD states that the UK clearly has a “serious” youth unemployment problem and that talk of a ‘lost generation’ of young jobless people is misleading.  Official statistics from the Office of National Statistics state that one in five 16-24 year olds are unemployed; the CIPD argue that this is based on a ”a narrow and somewhat misleading interpretation of official statistics” so who knows what the true figures are? You can read more on this article at the website - People Management.

What do you think about the conflicting evidence on youth unemployment?  For us at RateMyPlacement, it highlights even further the importance of obtaining employability skills and getting a foot in the door before it’s too late!  There are still opportunities available so what are you waiting for?!

Visit RateMyPlacement.co.uk to find out more :)

We are all aware of the high levels of graduate unemployment and the rising costs of attending university.

It’s not all bad though!  An article in Personnel Today discusses how important undergraduate work experience is, both for students and employers. Maria Floud, senior graduate recruitment manager at accountancy firm Grant Thornton, states that the increase in university fees is making employers reflect on their schemes and realise how important it is to attract students from an earlier age.

“The internship model used as a key pipeline to the graduate programme is very successful. We recently won the ‘Best Placement and Internship’ award by Rate My Placement, due to the focus we put on ensuring this programme to find great talent earlier on.”

Congratulations to Grant Thornton and thanks for our mention – hopefully this will give employers and students the oomph and encouragement to undertake a placement or internship scheme  :)

If you’re a student there is still time to grab a placement or internship this summer so check out the opportunities on http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/search

We are also interested to hear your thoughts so drop us a line with your comments below.

Thanks,

The RateMyPlacement Team

An article in the Evening Standard yesterday accused London’s leading museums and art galleries of exploiting interns who work for no pay up to nine months at a time!

The article mentioned museums such as The National Gallery, Natural History Museum, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery who are being criticised for hiring unpaid interns.  Critics said the benefits of internships were being ‘abused by employers’ adding there is no way students can afford to live and work without being paid a wage.

Labour MP Luciana Berger carried out research on this hot topic and found the  National Gallery had nine unpaid interns working for between three weeks and nine months at a time over a year-long period ending last September.

What do you think about this?!! Exploiting students on unpaid work placements and internships is completely against our beliefs and employers need to realise this…Work experience is key, especially is this climate of graduate unemployability – the highest in over 10 years according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).  There are several paid placements and internships which you can do, just look on www.ratemyplacement.co.uk for inspiration.

We would love to hear your thoughts on whether you have taken an unpaid placement and internship…we believe that employers should not exploit students and as MP Berger sums up, “nine months unpaid is exploitation, not experience.”

Please add you comments below

The RateMyPlacement team

It’s an exciting time as many of you people on placement break the half way stage. Our Guest Blogger at CSC, David Galbraith updates us with his experiences so far…

“6:30am: I’ve woken to get into the office for 8. Unfortunately this is one of the 90% of the time I will ‘regretfully’ change my alarm to 7:00 and take the later train. Sometimes I’ll be sleepy and mistakenly change the clock on my phone instead of the alarm; resulting in being as late as I am tired.

7:30am: I’m praying for a stray copy of CITY AM, but as always, disappointed to get the metro. I get into work around 8.30.

9:00am: Roll into the office, picking up breakfast on the way (great canteen at HQ). I’m updated on e-mails so crack into the redesigning of a spreadsheet workbook for a monthly metrics report to be presented on client site. Could be a big deal and lots of saved hours If I can implement a straight through process for the data entry.

11:00: Am a little fed up now with cell merging and alignment nuisances so I use this opportunity to chase up a work shadowing opportunity with the UK Sales Director. I’m just after completing my last shadowing within Human Resources, which involved sitting behind the scenes on an assessment centre and constructing a report suggesting ways to improve the Assessment and recruitment process.

12pm: Early lunch to miss the queues. Heading down to meet with the other interns and a couple of the graduates. Gamon again. My plate is (again) hidden under a mound of spuds. Conversation is of the utmost quality as it quickly mutates from (the days) work into topical banter regarding the Irish famine, Dawei Wang’s hair (See picture) and of course planning the next night out.

13pm: Lunch done. Ate too much so drowsy now. Preparing a plan for a job that we will be orchestrating across the water (which will now be made harder as a result of my overfeed). I’m running an audit alongside the work, which is a hefty job, so requires accurate planning. Problem being confusion concerning the task direction, which seems to change every week.

15pm: Catch up with a team member to discuss progress on another of my tasks, to complete a retrospective audit on some assets. This is a very ambiguous task of recording all asset details of all-of-some software items. I suggest we meet with a project manager who dealt with the items previously. Another day please…

16pm: I’m in control of my work so leave early. I prefer to keep things at extremes. Either I’m one of the first to leave or the last. I don’t appreciate wasted time in the office when the work is under control and I understand how effective a long night of work in the office can be in getting a critical piece of work perfected. I keep my messenger and email on my Curve 24/7 so I’m never out of communication.

17pm: Cue discussion of which bar to visit on the way home with the other interns. This is a very dangerous idea but ALWAYS a good one at the time.

Well there it is. I think it’s important to clear the mist from the ambiguous ‘business’ placement role title and offer an insight into what actually happens day to day.

Overall and otherwise, things are looking well. I have applications rolling for summer placements, and CSC is looking quite good  concerning a post-university graduate programme. I picked up a Recognition Award last month and have just been assigned to a new project. Seems cool. Will update again soon.

Good Luck in your applications!”

You can find out more from David, as well as our other Guest Bloggers over the coming year!

Feel free to add your thoughts below! Would you like a placement at CSC?

The recent High Fliers Survey published on the 18th January revealed how important it is for students to gain work experience before they graduate.

Martin Birchall, Managing Director of High Fliers Research explains:

“It’s not enough just to have a good degree.  Students need to have business skills.  Employers want them to be able to hit the ground running.”

Almost all of the UK’s leading graduate employers are offering work experience programmes for students and recent graduates during the 2010-2011 academic year.   It stresses the importance of students gaining those all important employability skills before they graduate in order to secure a graduate job.

This is where we come in…..RateMyPlacement can help you find a placement or internship – we don’t want you to be another statistic and an unemployed graduate!

There are several deadlines coming up including Hiscox, Mayer Brown, Microsoft, IBM and Centrica to name but a few!  Check out the ratemyplacement.co.uk and apply now to avoid disappointment

Good luck!

The RateMyPlacement Team