Student and graduate enterprise
Bright idea grew into recession-beating company
Company
RateMyPlacement
Loughborough graduate
Ali Lindsay, Oliver Sidwell,
Ben Smith, Chris Wickson
The idea of RateMyPlacement was born from an email debate in 2006 between four friends scattered about the country on industrial placements. They all agreed that prior knowledge of a company was invaluable to students when choosing placements. They discovered there were no websites that allowed students or interns to rate and review their experiences.
Gleaning a small amount of funding from friends and family, the team enlisted Loughborough graduate Andy Higgs to develop such a site. RateMyPlacement was launched in March 2007, receiving 50 reviews and 300 members within its first week. The team were invited to present at the 2007 PlaceNet (the network of UK placement officers) annual conference; this exposure meant placement officers started promoting RateMyPlacement to their students at universities nationwide.
RateMyPlacement won the University’s Business Plan Competition in May 2007. The £1,500 cash prize was reinvested back into the website to optimise its advertising potential to employers. Today, the site has more than 70 clients using its services to promote their undergraduate opportunities, including GlaxoSmithKline, Barclays, Standard Life, Shell, Nestlé and BAE Systems.
In May 2008, RateMyPlacement became a full-time, fully operating business with three of the four founders Ali, Oliver and Chris on board. Today, it is the website of choice for major blue chip global companies wishing to recruit placement students, receiving over 35,000 visitors each month and employing nine full-time staff at a Central London head office.