Hello all!

As you can probably tell by now, RMP has jumped on the blogging bandwagon and every other Thursday you will be hearing from myself, I’m one of four placement students here trying their best not to mess up all the hard work that has been put into the company thus far.

Now I could bore you with stories from my life in London, but instead I have decided to bring you some regular features that will hopefully bring a cheeky smile to your face.

Firstly, I will bring you “YouTube video of the week”. My first one, some of you may have seen as it has racked up over 3.5 million hits and it sort of tells you a lot about myself as a person and my sense of humour. (Volume needed)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK_CKtYCRIc

I think what we have learnt here is: Kitten + Tortoise + Chamillionaire = YouTube Hit! I’d like to thank my friend Daniel for introducing this to me and hopefully you guys enjoyed it as much as I did. I’d also love to hear from you guys about your favourite YT vids, so either post them in a comment below or send them over to tom.wilson@ratemyplacement.co.uk and I’ll pick my favourites to blog about.

So next up we have my “Purchase of the Week” feature. Here I will discuss, yes you guessed it, my top purchase from that week and being somewhat of an impulse buyer I’m sure we will see some amusing items. This week my award goes to my Thomas the Tank Engine Toothbrush. I recently visited friends in Sheffield for a 21st and stupidly forgot my toothbrush, so took a trip into Poundland and found this little beauty. After making several appearances over the weekend my friends gave me a challenge to get photo’s of Thomas at various landmarks I visit across the globe and you can see the first one here when he visited Edinburgh Castle.

Features from this item include: Teeth cleaning, suction pad at base that allows it to be stuck to (almost) all surfaces and best of all, if your name is Thomas, it has your name on it!

Next I bring you the “LAD of the Week” feature. Here I will discuss who in the week has really stepped up to the plate and earned the prestigious nod of approval from men across the country.

This week it goes to a guy who literally changed the way we look at the world and certainly how we interact with each other. I am of course giving this week’s award to the late Steve Jobs. After a long battle with cancer, Jobs unfortunately passed away last week leaving the technological world in mourning. Not only did he create technology like their were pieces of art but gave us the opportunity to do things such as play Football Manager on the go, get football score updates by the minute and check out the latest Sweedish page 3 girl on the train without looking like a complete pervert.

A few notable tributes include one from Barack Obama: “Steve was among the greatest of innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

“The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.” 

And on that note I award Steve Jobs the LAD of the Week award. We salute you sir, RIP.

On that note I would like to give you a huge thanks for reading, especially if you made it to this point. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks and feel free to leave comments or questions/tweet the blog to friends/repost on your wall, it’s all appreciated.

Adéu, Kwa herini, Auf Wiedersehen and Goodbye!

Tom

Hi RateMyPlacement fans…

As you’ve probably gathered, the RMP team are posting blogs everyday to give you an exclusive look inside the crazy, wacky world of RMP.  Well today, it’s my turn!!

I’m Liz, responsible for running the Marketing team and have clinched the title of longest standing RMP member to date (18 months down the line and still more petrol in my engine!).  Being the adventurous type, I love to try new things and make the most of my weekends down here in the big smoke.  One of the funniest experiences I have had so far includes 10 friends, one canal boat and a whole of lot of shenanigans…..

As I am now an experienced barge boat driver (trust me, it’s not as easy as it looks!), I have listed a few key pointers below should you ever find yourself stranded on a canal boat….

1. Pack enough food & drink to get you through a weekend on a boat

2. Find out how to drive the boat before you set sail

3. Do not let friends who are under the influence drive

4. Keep your arms, legs, glasses, iphones, bottles inside the moving barge…it’s a dangerous place out there

5. Never tie your boat near local youths as you may find yourself adrift when you rise in the morning

6. Learn how to master the art of opening locks before you get to one

Hope the above is helpful/interesting/inspires you to drive a boat.  Has anyone out there in cyberspace been on a canal boat ?  I want to hear your comments, have you done anything else funny?  Ideas are always welcome…

Try something new today!  That goes for a placement or internship too (have to get the plug in there somehow!)

Until next time x

Fancy hearing about a placement at TUI straight from the horses mouth?! Then read on as throughout the year, we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers. Meet Ben and Amy who have just started their placements with TUI….find out what they’ve been up to so far!

“Firstly we would like to say hi to all of our bloggers on the Rate My Placement Website! We’ll start firstly by introducing ourselves – we’re Amy and Ben, two of the nine new placements at TUI Travel this year. We’re both in the third year of our courses at Loughborough University. Amy is studying Retail, Marketing & Management, and Ben is studying Transport & Business Management.

The placements at TUI are based at the Head Office in Luton, are are in the Product, Trading, and Cruise departments, which all sit under the Commercial Division. Katie and Max work in Late Trading, Becky and Saoirse are in Early Trading, Holly trades Accommodation Only, Joel and Antoni are in Cruise whilst we’re both working in Product.

Over the next twelve months, Ben has been placed in the Short Haul team in product, looking after the resorts of Mainland Spain & Portugal, and Amy has been placed in the Long Haul team, working on the resorts of Aruba, Mexico, Cuba & Jamaica. We’d like to give you some information about Product which is central to the whole of the Commercial Division. Our job involves making key strategic decisions – starting with deciding on which hotels we will feature for each of our resorts, what product we’ll be selling, pricing them to ensure a strong profit, then designing and placing them into our brochures. Once this is all finalised and signed off, it gets handed over to our Trading teams to sell and yield manage throughout the season. We also have the day-to-day role of answering queries from anyone across the whole business about our resorts, as well as trying to ensure that they are selling well throughout the year, by analysing sales reports and meeting with the Trading team.

We’ll now give you a brief overview of Trading. They’re responsible for analysing sales and reacting with pricing decisions, depending on many things such as the current rate of sale or the state of economies around the world. For example, if they see that a hotel is not selling well in a resort, they will adjust the price in an attempt to try to increase demand to that hotel and hopefully the resort, too.

Lastly, but not least, the Cruise team have their own Product and Trading teams, similar to the above, but dealing with cruise holidays and the ships which fall under the Thomson & Island Cruises brands.

We’ll now give you a quick outline of our induction period. Lasting two weeks, we had an in-depth overview of TUI, along with some great activities to break the presentations up. Examples of which included a cocktail party activity (unfortunately, no alcohol was involved) which helped us to develop our understanding of the different TUI brands and products, a visit to the Thomson Airways hangar to see the aircraft undergoing maintenance, as well as a mystery shopping activity in our own retail stores to check up on customer service. We were made to feel really welcome by everyone for these first couple of weeks – we even went out for lunch in our teams on the first day!

This week at TUI in the Commercial Division has been People Week. Throughout the week, there have been many activities going on, including presentations taking place, similar to in our induction. On Wednesday night we also had a quiz – unfortunately we didn’t win but we had loads of fun and so many people got involved and had a laugh. The week has been ‘back to school’ themed, so today everyone came in dressed in uniform! (We both won the awards for being the best dressed in our department – great first impressions done for us!). We’ve also got some more exciting social events lined up for us, including team nights out, the TUI Sports Day weekend in Shropshire and, of course, not long now until the Christmas parties start!

That’s it for a few weeks from us, we’ll be updating you again soon. Don’t forget to check out our Facebook group as we’re now recruiting for next years intake!”

Join Tui’s Facebook group for more information, just click the button here. You can also find out more from Ben and Amy at TUI Travel, plus visit the Industry Zones on RateMyPlacement for more personal accounts from students on internships and placements!

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

Could you ever imagine 60 interns from UBS learning to juggle, walk on stilts and form a human pyramid?  Well these are a few of the activities which aim to test new interns networking abilities, help them bond as a team and act as an icebreaker in a fun & comfortable environment.  Russ and I (Liz) from the RateMyPlacement team were invited down to a session to find out more….

UBS has been working regularly with Circus Space as part of their training programmes as a means for interns to work on the 7 core competencies candidates are assessed on while having fun at the same time.  Circus Space offers a unique mix of circus skills including:

• Human Pyramid Building
• Juggling
• Double Dutch
• Stilt-walking
• Diabolo
• Tight-wire walking
• Plate spinning
• Plus many more activities to dabble in!

Both Russ and myself were lucky enough to get stuck in with the UBS interns and try our hand at juggling, double-dutch (skipping for all those who don’t know), stilt-walking and human pyramid building. It was a fantastic afternoon and it is clear to see why UBS and Circus Space have formed this unique partnership to develop the raw business skills and professional qualities needed for a career at UBS.

The UBS team enjoyed papping us all during the various activities and it was a great way to get to know your team mates.  As you can see in the picture on the right, trust is very important when you are relying on a group of people to hold you up!

Fancy following in their footsteps? Make sure you check out the reviews at RateMyPlacement.co.uk and find out more about the opportunities with UBS here.

Thanks UBS for a great afternoon

So after the ordeal of trawling through London the day before to find all the universities we will be visiting in freshers weeks, our boss Lizzie thought it would be a good idea to give us a nice rest…oh no wait, she gave us a treasure hunt to do! Once again we were exposed to the mean streets of London, only this time to go and find the headquarters of some of our biggest clients. This time, we had some extra help! Michael, the digital placement, has been dragged along this time to test his navigational skills.

So first it was the turn of Grant Thornton, winners of our Placement and Internship Awards as well as being our very good friends! So it was one down and ten to go, but we were ever the optimists and mapped out the rest of our journey so we could get back and enjoy a well deserved, end of the week drink! Next stop…Embankment, which is home to (the pretty impressive) PriceWaterhouseCoopers HQ’s in which we took a very well posed photo! After grabbing a cheeky lunch and enjoying a few minutes in the sun it was off to Linklaters, who were very unsure of what we were doing and decided it was best we didn’t take any photos of the building…spoil sports!

But we refused to be kept down and although we were starting to tire, we decided to march on to take a photo of our next destination, Lloyd’s Banking Group, which we are pleased to say was taken with no hassle. After checking our reliable online map, we found out we could walk to the next two destinations, what we didn’t account for however, was my poor ability to read our reliable map! So after walking ten minutes in the wrong direction and cooling ourselves off with a beautiful Chocolate Chiller Smoothie we reached Bank of America. We were greeted with a few odd looks and a comment from an American saying “Man these guys really love our bank!”.

Next up was Deloitte, a short walk down the road from BOA and directly opposite the venue to our highly anticipated Summer Intern Party! So we were able to get a good look at where all the magic was going to take place (and by the looks of it, it’s going to be a top night!) Jamie also found herself a date for the party, not usually the type she goes for, but he looks like a stand up guy. For most of us the next stop was a first time experience, and a bit like a step into the future if I’m honest. We headed to the amazing Canary Wharf, home to the titans of industry. We made our way there on the DLR, a lovely change to the sweaty tube we were used to for the past two days, and we were on the hunt for Barclays. So after making our way through the maze of skyscrapers we managed to knock out Barclays as well as Citigroup in quick succession. Just as we were making our way to Morgan Stanley and enjoying all the sights Canary Wharf had to offer, we were brought to a halt by a security guard in a golf cart, informing us once again that we were not allowed to take photo’s of the Morgan Stanley building. So after we were asked to show identification (yes, IDENTIFICATION!), we decided it really wasn’t worth it and decided to make our way to the holy grail…THE LAST COMPANY!

So after catching a quick tube to Waterloo we stroll along to find the last building on the bank of the Thames, and with a huge sigh of relief we posed for our final photo at IBM. We then decided we would enjoy the gorgeous summer day and walk back to the office. We were treated to some of London’s great, and not so great, street acts along the bank before making the last push to walk up to the stairs to the office. Then we saw it, the one thing we had done all this for, and the sight of that crisp cold beer had never looked so good!

RateMyPlacement named winners in the Barclays Take One Small Step Competition!

After a few nail biting weeks, we are proud and very chuffed to be named as the London winners in the Barclays Take One Small Step competition. This means we win £50,000 to invest back into RateMyPlacement and develop the business in the future….

Thanks so much for all the votes and support you have given us over the last few weeks, we couldn’t have won without you!

Celebrations are in order so look out for the pictures on our facebook group!

Thanks again for your support & votes!

The RateMyPlacement Team

Wow!  Hasn’t Higher Education gone mad in the last few days?

The new White Paper, called Students at the Heart of the System details plans to make universities bid for a proportion of their places – a higher proportion than had been anticipated.

This proportion of universities bidding for places is “just the start”, said Mr Willetts. “We want to extend the system so more places are contestable.”

Whilst this is meant to be a step in the right direction, students are not happy!  Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students said: “Fees have been tripled and students have been exposed to the potential chaos of the market and yet there are still no concrete proposals for how quality, accountability and access will be improved.”

This report from the BBC is one of many published in the last two days….we want to hear your thoughts!  You can read the full article here.

Is it right to put students in the driving seat or is the prospect of graduating from uni with over £20,000 debt just ridiculous?

Let’s hear your vote

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

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