Plenty of blogging going on over at RMP and I am keen to keen to keep my own going. Last time we interviewed the yellow suit wearing Sales Director and co-founder Ollie, read his interview here. It was a real insight into a special boy who has grown up fast over the last 2 years.

Today I am interviewing Chris, my other mate from halls at Loughborough in way back 2003, the other leg of the “Tripod” (we didn’t come up with it), definitely the sturdiest and heaviest of the legs at that. Chris has had many roles at RMP, he would claim to be our “Director of Technical Excellence” having taught himself a lot of the coding, database and other essential areas of the website, he also dabbles in the finances, PR, recruitment, sales, is the @RateMyPlacement Tweeter and generally just being the Big Dog around the office.

Chris, how are you? 

I’m good thanks Al…

So… What were you doing when I disturbed you?

Checking out BBC Sport and Twitter.

What’s your average day like?

Depends on the time of year – at the moment (especially with Ollie on holiday in Thailand), I am looking after the campaign delivery side of RateMyPlacement – so doing my best to ensure all of our clients have successful campaigns on the website and receive a great service. Aside from that, I look after the ‘business’ side of things here, so your finances, your business planning etc.

What’s been your best thing about RMP?

I’d say taking something from literally an idea all the way to where we are today, with our own offices, a growing team of great people and exciting plans for the future. It’s been an amazing few years and I’m genuinely excited about where the next few might take us.

It’s also been great fun building the business with a couple of good mates, we’ve had plenty of good times along the way.

And the biggest challenge?

From a business perspective, I would say initially convincing companies that students submitting a review of their placement/internship with them was not a bad/negative thing!

From a personal perspective, my ability to delegate. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and do sometimes find it hard to delegate tasks that I’ve built up from scratch over the past few years. Having said that, this is clearly a vital aspect of running a business and something I am working on.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Rich.

What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?

Bloody good question and one I’ve got absolutely no idea on. I’d have probably followed the well-trodden graduate path down to London, got myself a decent grad job, then realised I didn’t want to work for a big company and gone travelling for a few years.

Ideal dinner party guests?

How many am I allowed?

• Noel Gallagher – love that guy, I could listen to him speak and sing all day long
• Josh Homme – the Ginger Elvis
• Harry Redknapp – I reckon after a few glasses of red, he’d have some great stories and I could persuade him to give me the last 10 minutes of a Spurs game
• Holly Valance (topical) – saw her on Strictly the other day (not that I watch it, just passing) and reminded me of how much I loved her when she was in Neighbours

Need another girl otherwise Holly might feel outnumbered…

Either Cheryl Cole or Sue Barker. Or both.

What a dinner party that would be.

Pet hate?

Incompetent people. Just be better at stuff.

Favourite Sport / Music?

Sport – football. I am player-manager of the Mighty Civil Service 4th XI – oldest club in the world and members of the Southern Amateur League. At the time of writing, we’re sat in 4th place in the Minor Division North, in case you’re interested. I’m also a part-season ticket holder at Spurs.

Music – rock & roll. Love a guitar. Last gig was Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds a couple of weeks ago at the Roundhouse – amazing.

Top tip to any student looking for a career now?

Don’t give a recruiter any excuse to reject your application. Check it, check it, get someone else to check it and check it again. Spelling/grammatical mistakes in an application form are unforgivable.

If you have any questions for Chris, he loves nothing more than to email or Tweet, get him on Chris@RateMyPlacement.co.uk or @RateMyPlacement.

Next time we’ll be interviewing Liz, the longest serving member of the Team.

I hope you enjoy the blog, I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts.

Ali ali@ratemyplacement.co.uk

How are we? I am very excited about my first Blog in a series delving further into the RMP Team; what we do, what makes us tick and our plans for the future. Every 2 weeks I’ll be interviewing a member of the team, hopefully this should give you a good insight into the goings on at RMP Towers and will be essential reading for any student who will be applying for a Placement Scheme when they open in the next month.

Today I am interviewing Ollie, my mate from halls when we were fresh-faced freshers at Loughborough back in 2003, a fellow founder of RMP Enterprise and a bloke I have spent far too much time with in the past 8 years. Ollie is our main Salesman, our Sales Director, a penguin lover (not in that way), and someone who has come a long way from his days at uni (see photo below); but when you start that far behind it’s hard to fully catch up…

So Ollie, hi…

What were you doing when I disturbed you?

Speaking to a potential new client about becoming a sponsor for the upcoming Awards. We’re due to launch our annual event this week, therefore a big focus of my job at this time of year is to secure sponsors for the event. The call was with UCAS, and pleased to say they came onboard!

What’s been your best thing about RMP?

Starting and growing a business from scratch has taken us a while, as you well know pal… But now we’re established in our market, the focus of the strategy is continuing to grow the business at such a rate and that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

And the biggest challenge?

Constantly questioning what I am doing. Without ‘a boss’ I have to constantly ask myself the questions a boss would to ensure I am being as effective and productive as I can be, and that’s tough as you’re benchmarking yourself… against yourself. Wow, mature, boring answer. I’ll answer the rest with more fun involved

What did you want to be when you grew up?

A zookeeper or a cricketer. Loved animals and had loads of toy animals when I was a child, therefore I always thought I’d be a zookeeper if my cricketing abilities didn’t get me anywhere… which that haven’t! In fact, I was a knitting pattern model as a baby, so actually, I could have been a model but I was taken out of the limelight at a young age by my mother. Never forgiven her.

Ideal dinner party guests?

Ricky Gervias, Shane Warne, Peter Griffin, Jennifer Aniston and Lucy Pinder. You’ve got yourself a great party. The jokes, idiocy and civilised knowledgable chat with the lads, then Jennifer and Lucy to also enjoy their company too. Because they’re nice people.

Pet hate?

Dogs, snakes and knives. A lethal concoction if you put them all together, but they all scare/annoy me individually.

Favourite Sport / Music?

Trance

Ideal Holiday?

Thailand in 3 weeks with 4 of my best mates (sorry Al). Hitting a full moon party and travelling around beaches/bars… Cannot wait!

Top tip to any student looking for a career now?

Start looking earlier than you think you should. The best opportunities are snapped up earlier by companies looking to offer candidates on a first come, first served basis – therefore get applying sooner rather than later!

If you want to ask young Oliver a question write a little comment below, if you want to send him an email of praise (no abuse please, he’s a sensitive lad) get him on Oliver@RateMyPlacement.co.uk.

In a fortnight I will be interviewing the other co-founder, Chris.

I hope you enjoy the blog, I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts.

Ali ali@ratemyplacement.co.uk

In December 2010, On-CampusPromotions.co.uk, the new on-campus engagement arm of RateMyPlacement.co.uk, surveyed 1,209 1st & 2nd year students gaining their opinions on everything from fairs attended, media habits to their career influences. Respondents were from 51 different institutions and were made up by an even spread of 1st & 2nd years and males & females.

The results of the survey were announced in part one of a 2 part session by the On-Campus Promotions team at the recent National Placement & Internship Awards. The second part of the presentation saw the invitees given an insight into how to engage with students from our panel of 6 Brand Managers & Society Presidents.

As we see more of a shift towards recruiters engaging with students at a younger age, there is even more need to gauge the opinions of undergraduates, an area which we have found many student surveys ignore. The highlights of the survey are shown below:

• 84.8% of the 1st & 2nd year respondents had attended a Freshers Fair compared to 54.7% who had attended a Careers Fair. Only 40.5% of respondents had visited the careers service.
• When we break this down by year group only 39.5% of 1st years had attended a Careers Fair and 22.5% of 1st years had been to the careers service.
• 71.6% of respondents were a member of societies with an average 2.54 societies each.
• The most useful when searching for a career was the University Careers Website (93.7% voted very / quite useful) and the least were Social Networks (38.4%)
• The most influential when making career related decisions was Careers Advisors (80.5% voted high / moderate influence) compared to the lowest Student / Friends (59.5%).
• For 1st years, Relatives & Recent Interns were the most influential alongside relatives with experience.
• 96.6% of our users were on Facebook and 24.6% were on Twitter
• 58.0% of respondents would never interact with recruiters on Facebook and 41.6% would be uncomfortable or very uncomfortable combining a social media presence with job hunting.
• 77% of students went to University to improve their career prospects and 90% plan to get work experience before graduating.
• Despite the above only 28% are aware of work experience opportunities for 1st years and 30% know what they want to do after graduating.

For full details of the Survey Responses and to read about the insights from our panellists, click on the button below and download the results in full:

As always, we would love to hear from you, so tell us your thoughts below…

The deadline has passed, the entries and nominations are in… and we are delighted to announce the employers, universities and students that have been shortlisted for the inaugural RateMyPlacement Awards!

In the first year of our Awards we were delighted with the participation shown by corporates, students and universities and entering and nominating for the Awards. By the time 5pm on Friday 27th November came around we had over 200 entries and nominations in total with around 120 coming in a rather exhausting final week. It didn’t stop there though as we had set ourselves a deadline of Wednesday to go through all entries and come up with a shortlist. After several late nights, some good debates and tough decisions we have finally whittled down a shortlist which can be seen on the link below.

An independent judging panel will now decide which of the shortlisted parties deserves to become the overall category winner and the winners will be presented with their Awards at the event itself on Thursday 21st January 2010. Tickets for the event are currently invite only and will be going out to shortlist and sponsors however if you are interested in keeping up to date with the Awards then please leave your details below.

If you have any further enquiries please contact enquires@ratemyplacement.co.uk

• Complete the form below and we will add you to our mailing list.

For more information about Grant Thornton’s undergraduate opportunities click here.

The video highlights the injustice, and often elitism, experienced when you have to take an internship to get into your chosen field of work, but the culture of that industry is that you are expected to work for free.

Watching the video made me realise how lucky I was to be given the opportunities to gain work experience AND be paid well for it. It did make me wonder why IT, professional services, engineering, law and many others will pay their interns, whereas if you are keen to get into politics, design, and NGO etc you are expected to do it for free.

Maybe it is the fact that a lot of the companies / industries are global, and often with an American influence, or maybe it is because they are seen as more money driven.

Either way, we stongly feel that Interns should be paid for the hard work they do, and hopefully the campaigning and awareness raising by Interns Anonymous will cause a shift so that all interns will be paid, and work experience will become more accessible by all.

The final dates for the Awards have now been confirmed, so make sure you add them to your diary and register your interest below to make sure you don’t miss out on anything.

• 27th November – Closing dates for entries and nominations
• W/C 30th November – Announcement of short-list of entries
• W/C 30th November – Invites sent to short-listed entries
• W/C 14th December – Judging panel to decide on winners
• 21st January – Awards Ceremony at Oxford Brookes University

If you need any further information then please contact ali@ratemyplacement.co.uk.

Some of you may have noticed that there have been a couple of changes to the Awards entry & nomination process. It is nothing major and certainly won’t affect those of you who have not submitted a nomination or an entry. To ensure the process and any changes are totally transparent, we have put together a brief overview of the updates… What has changed? For all Awards that required an entry or nomination, there are now 3 to 4 detailed questions instead of the one generic entry box. Why have we done this? We have decided that we did not give entries & nominations enough guidance as to what to write in their nomination and this meant we had a real variety of entries that would have proved very hard to compare and find winning entries. Overall it will make the judging process fairer and ensure those who deserve to win, do. How will this affect those who have already made an entry or nomination? If you have already made an entry or nomination don’t worry. We will take your existing entry and fit it to the questions we have put together. If we feel that additional information is required, we will then come back to you to ask whether you want to provide any further information to answer the questions. You will then be on a level playing field with all subsequent entries. As these are our first Awards, we are working hard to ensure they are as successful and credible as possible and feel that these changes will ensure the process runs as smoothly as possible. As always, we welcome any feedback or comments and apologise for any inconvenience caused. Cheers The RateMyPlacement team

Awards to Employers

Best Placement & Internship Employer (over 250 employees and 10+ reviews) – headline award – Click here for more information

Best Small or Medium sized Enterprise (under 250 employees) – Click here for more information

Best New Provider of Work Experience – Click here for more information and nominations

Best Diversity in Work Experience – Click here for more information and nominations

Awards to Students

Best Student (win £500) – Award For Student Who Makes Best Contribution to Business on Work Experience – Click here to make a nomination

Best Society (win £1,000) – Award for the Society with Forward Thinking Attitude to Work Experience – Click here to make a nomination

Best Student Contribution (win £250) to RateMyPlacement.co.uk (award to a regular website contributor) – Click here for more information

Awards to Universities

Best University Placement or Careers Service (as nominated by a student or employer) – Click here to make a nomination

Award for the University with Forward Thinking Attitude to Work Experience (nominated by the universities themselves) – Click here to make a nomination

We would love to hear your feedback and comment about the Awards, as it’s our first proper event we are always keen to improve them so give us you worst in the comments box below.

Cheers

Ali