The prospect of a 3 hour train journey to Newcastle wasn’t the most appealing, but in the comfort of East Coast Trains I was able to spend more time in the office (i.e Online) than i have been used to over the past few weeks. Once i arrived in Newcastle, i jumped staight into a taxi to the uni and was quickly ready for the I.T fair!

It was a departmental fair so the number of employers was small and as it was reading week attendance was quite low. I did get chance to meet a number of univeristy contacts and chat to some employers though whilst our rep Leanne held down the fort (so to speak).

Manchester bound I jumped on the Metro back to Central Station…

Overall Ratings

• Food: 6/10: Sandwich buffet, and refreshments provided throughout the fair.
• Freebies: 3/10. Due to the number and type of employers in attendance freebies were a little thin on the ground. The NHS were giving away branded smoothies which were good.
• Weather: 7/10. Dry thank god!
• Beer 2/10. Again a quick two hour visit in the middle of the day so no time for beer im afraid. Although a few glasses of wine in the evening equates to a score of 2.
• Grounds: 7/10. Nice campus, i hadn’t been before so it was good to have a quick look around.
• Greenery 4/10. Not much that I saw.
• Toilets: 6/10. Nice enough, the average score is because i had to trek through the union to find some toilets, only to later realise there were some off the room.
• Ambience 4/10. Quiet, but geordie’s are notoriously friendly and chatty which improves this score.

Newcastle Total Score: 40/80

Busy week this week, Leicester and Birmingham for me…

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It isn’t a place we get to very often, but last week RateMyPlacement were well covered in Lancaster; attending both the LUMS Mini Fair and the main Careers Fair in the Great Hall.

With reps covering the stand at the mini fair, it was my turn to attend the main Careers Fair and I was joined by Kat from Nestle for the FINAL KIT KAT CHALLENGE! (sniff). Tis’ the sign that we are nearing the end of our campus tour for 09/10…

All in all it was a good couple of days for RMP! We got a good number of signups and managed to speak to some really engaged students. Plus lancaster were very hospitable providing a shuttle bus from the exhibitors car park to avoid getting drenched and a great location in the main hall!

So here are the scores…

Overall Ratings

• Food: 7/10: Lasagne and Salad was a nice choice for a cold day. But i apparently missed the best part..garlic bread and for dessert gateaux!
• Freebies: 3/10. Very poor to be honest considering the number of employers in attendance. Worth noting Ernst and Young who even towards the end of the day had a fully stocked stand containing lollies (which were lovely!) and other great giveaways.
• Weather: 0/10. Horrendous! I should have worn wellies rather than pumps.
• Beer 2/10. The fair venue was on the other side of campus to the Student Union so no drinking holes nearby.
• Grounds: 7/10. Good, very well laid out and signposted…
• Greenery 7/10. Plenty around campus.
• Toilets: 8/10. Very clean.
• Ambience 6/10. A little quieter than expected, but our room was much more atmospheric than the smaller room at the back!

Lancaster Total Score: 40/80

Busy week this week, Leicester and Birmingham for me…

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Back again! It’s been quite a while since I wrote my last blog because I’ve been so busy I just haven’t had a chance. As I mentioned previously, I’ve been organising a virtual event so there was a lot to get done in the lead up. We invited about 300 people to this virtual event so it was really important that everything went to plan so we didn’t let anyone down; I needed to focus on organising everything and making sure we were completely prepared.

Anyway, the event was yesterday and it went really well! So it’s all over now and I’m really glad that me and my team’s hard work paid off. We had hardly any problems and the couple of people who did have some issues had them for reasons outside our control so there wasn’t anything we could have done differently to avoid it. We also had a back up plan prepared so the people who had problems still managed to experience the event – and only a handful of people ended up needing it which is good.

After the event finished my supervisor gave me some flowers and a little gift to say thank you for my hard work which was great to know that the effort I had put into organising the event had been acknowledged. It was a really nice gesture and I feel lucky to be in a team of such nice people that I get on with really well.

So what now? For the last couple of months the main focus of my job has been making this event a success. Now this is all over I can focus my job in some other areas. I need to catch up on a few things that have been put on hold while the event was my main priority. I also need to get a viral video edited down to a final version that can be approved by branding, whilst we are already thinking of ideas for new videos. I’m looking forward to getting creative and coming up with some great ideas.

Intel held an Open Day recently for potential new interns and quite a few of my friends here have been going to recruitment fairs at various universities to talk to students about a placement year at Intel. It’s seems so early to start looking for new interns as I feel like I’ve only just started working here. But I suppose Intel have realised you get a better choice if you recruit early and perhaps are looking for the type of people who are organised enough to start searching early? It’s actually been about 4 months since I’ve been working here and I’m feeling really settled, it’s just that time has absolutely flown by.

At the weekend the interns had a Halloween party which was really funny with some great effort put into costumes. We had someone dressed as a tombstone, a chilli pepper, Johnny Depp and all sorts! It was such a laugh and a great reminder that you don’t have to give up your University style social life when you go on placement.

Hoping I can get back to writing this more regularly now the event is over, and will keep you updated with the different kinds of things I’m planning to do…

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60 seconds… 20 Kit Kats… 1 Tower!

Working with our good friends at Nestle, we’ve recently been running the Nestle Kit Kat Challenge on campuses around the country. The Challenge? Simply build the highest tower out of 20 Kit Kat Chunky’s in 60 seconds…

The Results? Read on to find out more.

First to step up to the challenge….Aston University

The Kit Kat Challenge had its grand launch at Aston Uni last week and it seems to have been a big success! We had around 50 people take part, and had some cracking attempts. It’s surprising how passionate people can get when there is chocolate involved! Kit Kat fever quickly spread around the fair as we had a crowd of students eagerly awaiting their turn and discussing possible tactics.

The Results:
Prettiest tower goes to the guy who made a hexagon, however the winner was Rajni who managed to get to a height of 40.5cm.

The benchmark had now been set so our next stop, Manchester Uni, School of Computer Science had a lot to live up to!

Round 2…Manchester School of Computer Science

After the success of the challenge at Aston Uni we were excited about seeing what Manchester would offer and we weren’t disappointed. It seems that the logical minds of the computer science students went into overdrive as they were measuring the Kit Kats and working out dimensions to help make their tower the tallest. After a period of strategic thinking, the students carefully began to build their towers. A note to future contenders however, no matter how much of a mathematical approach you take to the challenge, if you don’t have a steady hand then chances are it will topple!

It wasn’t just the students who were keen to take part in Manchester as a number of corporate reps also fancied their chances. After failing the challenge they then decided it was best to stick to eating Kit Kats rather than building with them!

The Results:
An ever persistent Ian managed to build a tower that was 43cm tall! This was however, after about 5 attempts and therefore didn’t count (sorry Ian!)

In light of this the winner was James whose tower reached 40cm (only 0.5cm behind Aston!)

Birmingham University
The next stop on the Kit Kat Challenge was Birmingham University Careers Fair. It didn’t take long for curiosity to set in and within no time students were grouping around the stall wondering what was going on (and also trying to pinch my Kit Kat Chunkies!) We had the most contenders so far at Birmingham, so hats off to them for their enthusiasm.

Also the award for most inventive structure currently sits with Birmingham as a group of students (who I believe were engineers) built not a tower, but a bridge out of Kit Kats. It wasn’t very tall but impressive non the less!

The Results:
Throughout the day Patrick and his team of merry men were leading with a height of 37cm, this was then matched, but Tom Barnett pipped everyone to the post with a height of 37.5cm. Not quite as tall as Aston but a good result still.

Loughborough University
Whilst Birmingham were attempting to conquer the Kit Kat challenge, Loughborough University were also having a go. Although getting off to a slow start things started to hot up in the last hour which saw the tallest tower to date and Loughborough crowned as the one to beat. Alongside setting records it got very exciting when the challenge started being filmed, giving students their 15 minutes of fame…look out for the video coming soon!

Having run the challenge at a few Universities we are seeing popular techniques appearing such as ‘the house of cards’ and ’stacking’. At up and coming events we would like to see more of these techniques emerging so remember to get creative!

Top tip to future contenders: Remember to go for height not stability!!!

The Results:
Highest tower was a staggering 43.5cm!!! Congratulations Loughborough

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Excited to be back with RateMyPlacement after three weeks away on work experience, I shuffled my way through London and down to Brighton with my RateMyPlacement stand-up banner and clip boards in tow. On arrival at the venue I was told that the careers fair wasn’t until Thursday, it being a Tuesday I was slightly panicked. Luckily an onlooker came over and cleared up any misunderstandings and assured me that I was in fact in the right place as it was the ‘placement fair’ that I was supposed to be at! So, feeling a little bit silly I wandered off towards the fair location.

The fair was split into two sports halls, RateMyPlacement was situated next to Pepsico who had various consumable freebies – great result! Soon after I arrived I was joined by one of RateMyPlacements student reps, Anthony. He was a great help and we had a pretty successful day even though the turn out was relatively low. Many of the Brighton Students had already heard about the services RateMyPlacement have to offer and so were very keen to register, which was fab!!

I feel a need to congratulate whoever made the roast beef sandwiches they were amazing, thank you chef!!

All in all, a good day and I look forward to next week when I will be visiting Aston, Leicester and Cardiff Universities!!

Overall Ratings

• Food: 7/10. Cookies, lovely sandwiches, tea and coffee.
• Freebies: 6/10. Chocolate, crisps and Pepsi. Very nice!
• Weather: 1/10. Cold, dark and wet!
• Beer: 5/10. I didn’t have any, although I may as well have as I practically got drunk off the fumes coming from the Master of Malt stand who were giving away free spirits!
• Grounds: 6/10.
• Greenery: 5/10.
• Toilets: 5/10. Bit of a walk and pretty basic but adequate.
• Fancy Dress Costumes: 0/10.
• Hospitality: 8/10. I was warmly welcomed and was attended to throughout the day.

Brighton Total Score: 43/90

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After having my youngest sister Ellie to help me out at Imperial last month, my other sister Chloe who reps for us at Leeds Uni, made the short journey across to York (or should I call it, ‘the historic city of York’ as it was announced over a tannoy at the station…) for the York Science and Technology Fair.

The fair itself was well attended by employers and with a fairly steady stream of students, it was a worthwhile journey up t’north. We were running the Kit-Kat Challenge for the last time today and again it went down well with students however the Loughborough Uni record of 44cms wasn’t any danger with the highest a meagre 29cms!

Sporting my contemporary David Beckham style beard, I spent 20 mins being interviewed on camera talking about the value of placements and internships for students. This will be hosted on the York Careers website in their attempts to reinitiate a focus on employability skills and work experience – a good idea if you ask me…

Over to Manchester tomorrow for an e-skills IT internship degree course event, so a few drinks out with my sister and her friends in Headingley is on the cards – and the football is on. Another fine day in the world of RateMyPlacement, here’s the ratings…

Overall Ratings

• Freebies: 9/10. Kit Kat’s on tap and GCHQ frisbees.
• Food: 6/10. Good wraps, but no crisps or hula hoops
• Weather: 6/10. Dry after a mid morning thunderstorm. Note to self, don’t take the piss out of students in wellies, they get embarrassed.
• Beer: 9/10. En route to Headingley, the scene of the infamous Otley run.
• Grounds: 8/10. Historic city indeed.
• Ambience: 7/10. Fine….
• Bird Watching: 2/10. It was a science and technology fair?!

York Total Score: Total Score: 47/70!

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Tuesday saw my first visit to an AIESEC fair, which are essentially like normal careers fairs, apart from run by AIESEC – so not much different to what I am used to if I’m honest. The fair was in the Students Union which I have been to a few times however I had to park a country-mile away, and as it was throwing it down, it made for a very wet start to the day.

I was ably assisted by rep Ryan and he did very well manning the stand as I went off for frequent wanders and to make a few important calls (ordering my new iPhone). In the end we got around 100 sign-ups, however I think we can safely say this was rain affected, so did make for a long day.

Anyways, what are the scores George Dawes?

Southampton Total Score 26/70

Overall Ratings

• Food: 7/10. A cold buffet of sandwiches, sausage rolls and chicken legs, not bad at all.
• Freebies: 4/10. Great rubber ducky from QS, that will find its way into my bath.
• Weather: 2/10. p1ssing down, luckily I had the biggest umbrella in the world in my car.
• Beer: 5/10. Again no beer… Did have a mocha from the service station. I chose a mocca over a beer, what is happening to me!!!
• Grounds: 4/10. A bit weird if I’m honest, a big road goes through the middle, no greenery or sports grounds, I am guessing they are somewhere else though.
• Ambience: 2/10. Really quiet in terms of students and actual recruiters, plus it was really long so dragged a bit.
• Bird Watching: 2/10. They must be fair-weather (no pun intended) birds in Southampton.
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]]> http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/2009/11/06/southampton-uni-aiesec-fair/feed/ 0 http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/2009/11/06/southampton-uni-aiesec-fair/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RateMyPlacementBlog/~3/kqqn_L_kfxo/ http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/2009/11/05/aiesec-fair-showdown-manchester-vs-nottingham/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:51:29 +0000 cara.redford http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/?p=5401 Months of planning, have now been kicked into action and RMP are officially on the Campus tour for 09/10. We will be updating this blog with all the latest tales from our travels over the coming months, so make sure you check back soon!

Last week I was lucky enough to get to two AIESEC fairs; one in Manchester and one in Nottingham!

Manchester is a great campus and the venue for the event (next to the museum) was just as grand. The AIESEC team were really hospitable, the buffet was good and the students were the cherry on the pretty lil’ AIESEC fair sundae! A big thanks to Jess who helped me out on the day..it was certainly worth utilising a day of my uni ‘Enhancement Week’ for the good of RateMyPlacement.

Nottingham, whilst not as close to home, was really easy to get too! This was a big bonus as it was a last minute swap that led me to be at Nottingham rather than the NEC in Brum. I also got to take a trip down memory lane as the last time i was there was for a ‘Hen Do’ and so it brought back some good memories. A short taxi ride from the station to the univeristy and i was met with Bright Orange T-Shirts, Balloons and a repeat appearance from my beloved Range Rover Vogue from Brum! Excited! Held in the East Conference Centre there was a real ‘professional’ feel to the fair with lots of employers and media vying for Nottingham students.

To add a bit of variety to the blog lets compare the two…

Overall Ratings

• Food: Manchester 8/10: Nottingham 6/10. Good buffet offered at both fairs. However Manchester take the edge with free cans of coke and glasses of orange juice! Plus the sandwiches had better (and more normal) fillings.
• Freebies: Manchester 5/10: Nottingham 7/10. Not bad. Nottingham had more employers and therefore more freebies. Noteably Corus were giving away Baseball Hats and Canvas Bags.
• Weather: Manchester 8/10: Nottingham 8/10. Nice enough!
• Beer: Manchester 6/10: Nottingham 8/10. Again i was driving so no booze for me! RateMyPlacement are definitely against drink driving! Nottingham do score extra points as one of the stands was full of beer and alcopops. Granted these were just for show and as Wed night is a big one in Notts, students were a bit thin on the ground before dinner and to quote an exhibitor some looked “a bit rough”. My point is the beer must be good!
• Grounds: Manchester 6/10: Nottingham 8/10. Manchester is very spaced out and everytime i go i get lost – not being able to get my bearings on Oxford Road. Nottingham on the other hand was very picturesque! With the conference centre located a short drive from the west entrance…
• Greenery: Manchester 4/10: Nottingham 7/10. Very little vs a grassed and tree lined approach.
• Toilets: Manchester 5/10: Nottingham 10/10. Nottingham hits the jackpot – clean, modern, and pots of fancies! Manchester were clean but not quite so impressive…sorry Manchester!
• Fancy Dress Costumes: Manchester 0/10: Nottingham 0/10. No Fancy dress AGAIN!! I think i need to stop answering this question…no body dresses up for my fairs.

Manchester Total Score: 42/80
Nottingham Total Score: 63/80

Nottingham Wins…unofficially speaking Manchester had the most eye candy though! See you next time x

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]]> http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/2009/11/05/aiesec-fair-showdown-manchester-vs-nottingham/feed/ 0 http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/2009/11/05/aiesec-fair-showdown-manchester-vs-nottingham/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RateMyPlacementBlog/~3/1ba1ESA1aho/ http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/2009/11/04/guest-blogger-colin/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:58:24 +0000 cara.redford http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/?p=5263 Find out what our Guest Bloggers are getting up to. Throughtout the year we will be following the progress of our Guest Bloggers as they find a placement or keep us updated as to what they are doing on their placement. Click here to read all entries from our bloggers or click here to meet them.



7/9/09 Ninth Week

On Monday I had a half day deep dive into the capabilities of Microsoft’s new Operating System, Windows 7. I’d been using the programme since I started even though it wasn’t due out for quite some time. It was great to see how many new features were in this OS and what can be done with a bit of training, its a great improvement on Vista and unrecognisable from XP ( in a good way). I’d suggest to anyone to buy it. As a student you can get it for £30, that’s 90% off the retail price, just go to www.ultimatesteal.co.uk/student11

On Tuesday evening I had a team meal at Madonna’s favourite Italian restaurant in Mayfair. It was to welcome Paul, a new member of the team and myself, but also to celebrate the great year the team had had in the previous fiscal year. The restaurant was unbelievably swanky and 6 courses later I was full, but not bloated and rather impressed, as well as being pissed.



The rest of the week was taken up with preparations for 2 offsites, one was the Data Management Conference I was helping to organise for 600 people in London in a few weeks time. The other was an offsite that I had organised at a trendy cocktail lounge in Reading. I had been asked to organise an event where I could get all the stakeholders within the business in one room at the same time to discuss their plans for the upcoming financial year. Although stressful and not without disruption the event was a success and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves… especially those who decided to stay for the cocktail competition I had arranged for that evening.

14/9/09 Tenth Week

This week was a relatively quiet one, I spent the week just getting on with my projects namely, exploring how my team could exploit social media to a greater extent, helping to organise the Data Management conference and continuing the work I’d started on improving the connection between sales and marketing.

On the social media project I hooked up with two Microsoft’s foremost authorities on social media to discuss creating an ‘etiquette guide’ to online interaction for beginners. It’s a big topic across the company to start using social media more, but for it to be successful there are some simple guidelines that need to be followed. For many of the employees at MS Social Media is a bit of an intriguing mystery so the plan is to create a guide to help people make the most of this curiosity.



21/9/09 Eleventh Week

This week was pretty much devoted to the final preparations for the Data Management Conference (DMC) to be held next Tuesday. Odd jobs and final drafts (and final redrafts) were the order of the week. In addition to this I continued my exploration into social media and also helped Paul to create the shared marketing campaign calendar. This was to be a document hosted on an online share site called ‘Live Mesh’ (really handy). It would be the place for all the product managers to update the news about the campaigns they were rolling out to promote their product. For example the money they planned to spend on a series of telemarketing, the expected feedback from this and the return on investment. One thing I looked to implement was a graphical view, to allow easy visualisation of the financial year to see the past, current and future campaigns. This went down a treat and it’s now really easy for us to see the leads we need to be chasing up and when we need to begin preparations for an upcoming event.

Friday came around all too quickly again and my housemate who I get a lift off into work from was flying out to Milan to play for the Microsoft Football team (lucky bugger) hence why I started a bit later. I arrived to the office to find it the usual Friday Microsoft morgue (everyone’s ‘working’ from home). That was until I reached my department where David and Ian were rushing around to get ready for the conference call with all the speakers for the DMC. I joined this meeting after setting up and clarified what I’d arranged in terms of social and digital media for the event. I filled the rest of the day with sourcing gifts for all the speakers (laptop accessories, an Xbox and booze) and finalising how I was going to get all the collateral to the venue.

Catch my next blog to see how it goes!

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]]> http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/2009/11/04/guest-blogger-colin/feed/ 0 http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/2009/11/04/guest-blogger-colin/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RateMyPlacementBlog/~3/LotEsBhbQw0/ http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/2009/11/03/kings-college-london-careers-fair-day-2/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:34:30 +0000 cara.redford http://www.ratemyplacement.co.uk/articles/?p=5397 Months of planning, have now been kicked into action and RMP are officially on the Campus tour for 09/10. We will be updating this blog with all the latest tales from our travels over the coming months, so make sure you check back soon!



Kings is pretty much my local uni, a direct tube line and about 6 stops from my house, despite this I managed to go the wrong way, get lost and turn up late. Apparently they phoned Cara to find out where I was – Nice work me.

So anyway, the fair. There were some good corporates there and a fairly steady if unspectaculor stream of students. Many of them were keen on internships and as they were in London finance was the order of the day. Having said that, as it is in London, many of them were very anti finance and a few were moaning about Nestle, yet ate the Kit Kats – some mixed principles if you ask me.

KCL Total Score 32/60

Overall Ratings

• Food: 7/10. A sweet and sour vegetable dish, not bad.
• Freebies: 2/10. Can’t remember anything being given away to be honest apart from some sweets at PwC.
• Weather: 7/10. Bit of an indian summer I believe.
• Beer: 5/10. For the 3rd time in a row, no beer at a fair for me. As its London and near Covent Garden, it’s going to be good.
• Grounds: 3/10. Central London, if you didn’t know better you would say it looked like an office.
• Ambience: 4/10. A bit anyonymous and old wooden for me, plus I don’t really think I’d have liked being at a London uni.
• Bird Watching: 4/10. There were some goodies, but the urban surroundings didn’t do any favours.
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