Many students will be looking for placements within the next year, and with so many options, finding the right one for you can be overwhelming. It’s completely normal not to know where to start, and that’s why it’s important to do your research well in advance to ensure you’re exploring the best choices for your chosen career path.
More than 15 years ago, co-founder and director of RMP Enterprise, Ollie Sidwell, launched his business with fellow Loughborough students Ali Lindsay & Chris Wickson in the final year of their degrees. Today, his name and brand are synonymous with motivating and guiding young individuals to take their first steps towards a successful career.
Having struggled to find suitable placements, Oliver recognised the lack of information and resources available to students when taking their initial steps towards a career. Motivated to affect positive change, Ollie capitalised on the opportunity to fill a student void by developing a website that provides access to expert advice, peer-to-peer reviews and available jobs to shape careers and ignite inspiration among future generations.
Online reviews weren’t always as synonymous as today, especially for jobs, so Ollie set up RateMyPlacement. Now, it’s completely normal for employees to review their employer.
Since its inception in 2007, Ollie and the team have witnessed tremendous growth in the business, which now turns over seven million a year. Beginning as young graduates working from their bedrooms at their parents’ homes, RateMyPlacement has now expanded to become a parent company, running both RateMyPlacement and RateMyApprenticeship and employing over 70 individuals across offices located in Brixton.
In recognition of their hard work, the company was ranked 37th on the Sunday “Times Top 100 Small Businesses to Work For in 2020”, and more recently, they won Best Specialist Job Board at the National Online Recruitment Awards 2022.
RateMyPlacement transformed and became RMP Enterprise, diversifying its review and job board offerings to include a range of product lines, including on-campus activities and software.
When asked about his RMP Enterprise journey, Sidwell said, “We went through a broken process ourselves. At university, we found it difficult to understand all available placements and had no insight into which roles or organisations would be a good fit.
Dragons Den Star Peter Jones expressed enthusiasm and encouragement for our business idea during the 2008 Unipreneurs Competition final: “You’ve got a wonderful business with great potential; if you believe in it, it needs your time; that was our eureka moment.
“When we returned to university in our final year, we knew there was a huge market opportunity to support first and second years following in our footsteps – and we’ve done just that!
“Forward-thinking employers are increasingly looking to attract and engage talent earlier. By creating an undergraduate market category, we disintermediated the traditional graduate recruitment market, enabling employers access to the best early talent they could retain upon graduation.”
