Myself and Customer Success placement, Tom, had the chance to attend RateMyPlacement's (RMP) annual Sponsors Celebration in London this month alongside our Marketing Team Leader, Jess, and Sales & Marketing Director, Stuart. This event is pretty exclusive –  it’s an invite only event to companies who sponsor the National Undergraduate Employer (NUE) Awards, hosted by RMP themselves. The event was well-attended by smaller companies like us, as well as some of the bigger names like M&S, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. 

To fill you in, ProspectSoft  now sponsor the ‘Best Collaboration between a University and Employer’ award at the NUE Awards, which is all about championing Universities and Employers working well together and forming mutually beneficial relationships. 

Here at ProspectSoft, we advertise all our placement opportunities on RMP’s website to ensure we get the most amount of exposure possible. In fact, since September, 45,000 students have seen our presence online. This is up 21% year-on-year! The majority of our applications come through via RMP – so make sure you check out our opportunities here and apply before the end of January! ProspectSoft have built up a close working relationship with RMP over the years, and continue to support each other in our endeavours. This year, I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside RMP’s Marketing placement, Josh, to collaborate on social media campaigns to increase engagement on our content and raise awareness of our placement opportunities, as well as the importance of considering SMEs. From this, we’ve seen a significant increase in views on our content and applications have been flooding in! 

Tom and I eagerly travelled into London together, excited about the day ahead. When we arrived, we were greeted with champagne and mince pies, and had the opportunity to network with other employers. It was also great to finally meet some of the RMP team to put a face to the name! 

After our champagne and mingling, we all gathered to watch a presentation delivered by RMP’s Co-founder, Oliver Sidwell. He went through 8 RM-Pearls of wisdom, where he delved into some key insights from the past year, focusing on market trends that have surfaced in the undergraduate employability market, as well as providing actionable advice, hints and tips for employers and students.

Then, the moment we’d all been waiting for – the shortlist was revealed…

After Katie’s hard work on the making of this years’ video submission, along with Jess' expertly written application, we were ecstatic to hear our name announced in the shortlist. It was a sigh of relief to know that all the hard work had paid off! Let’s just say there was a massive cheer from all of us at ProspectSoft when our name was read out (no surprises there!). 

Next came the category for ‘Best Student Contribution to a Small to Medium-sized Employer’. Emily Scott, a previous placement student at ProspectSoft, was also shortlisted – a fantastic achievement, and of course another excuse for us PS lot to make ourselves known with a big cheer! 

I was also pleased to see my own University shortlisted for an award this year. Bath Spa University’s Placement Service are shortlisted for ‘Most Improved Commitment to Employability’. 

Cocktail making was next on the agenda! Stuart and Tom got well and truly stuck in – I think the ProspectSoft competitive streak came out in the competition to make the best cocktail! 

The final stop on the event’s agenda was a good old Christmassy quiz. We split up into teams, allowing us to get to know other employers at the event. Our very innovative team name, ‘The Rate My Enterprise Softies’ (made up of people from RMP, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and ProspectSoft, in case you didn’t quite make that connection), obviously gave us the competitive edge, seeing as we won the quiz and took home the prosecco prize!

We wrapped up the evening with a good old chinwag and more drinks with the RMP team – it had to be done! 

Given we’re placement students, this was a great opportunity for Tom and I, as it allowed us to really experience the partnership between PS and RMP. I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to attend the event, and it’s definitely spurred me on to implement some of the RM-Pearls when searching for next years’ placement students!