By Katie Wright on Wed 30 May 2018 in Placement Blog
Read more to find out about my day as being part of the Student Advisory Board at RMP's offices...
As 2 marketing students on placement, my colleague Jess and I, were asked to attend RateMyPlacement’s Student Advisory Board . The day entailed deep analysis of RateMyPlacement’s website, booklet and social media to see how this could be improved from a student’s perspective. As a partner of ours, RateMyPlacement have been extremely valuable to our company as they have helped us recruit the best, hard-working placement students, for example, me! Over the years, we’ve built a strong relationship with them, especially through events such as the NUE Awards, where we’ve been crowned a winner 6 times for the “Best Small to Medium-sized Undergraduate Employer”! So, we felt like this was a great opportunity to give something back to them by attending this day and contributing our student opinions.
Arriving at RateMyPlacement’s new offices
Due to a 12 o'clock start in London, Jess and I had a very nice lie in! We left home at 8:45am and headed to the train station. RMP's offices are based in Brixton in London so after a long train journey and a couple of tube stops, we arrived. We were greeted with drinks and a nice selection of biscuits, which always goes down well! Luckily, Jess and I had met some of the team before so it was great to see them again and we could all have a lovely catch up. There were 3 other students involved in the Student Advisory Board and they arrived shortly after us; a placement student from Warner Bros, a university student from the University College of London and one from the University of Surrey.
Beginning the Student Advisory Board
Before starting the first session, everyone took part in an icebreaker to get to know each other better. This involved each student giving a short introduction on themselves and answering a random question that had been prepared beforehand that we had to pick out of a mug. Personally, I think I had such a predictable answer to my question – “if you had to have a lifetime supply of one food what would it be?” Jess and I laughed instantly, because even she knows I’m obsessed with chocolate! So that wasn’t a hard question to answer! After a few introductions and a lot of laughs, Amirah, the Marketing Co-ordinator from RMP (who was leading the whole day), gave us a breakdown of what the day would involve and how each session would be split up. The first discussion was on RateMyPlacement’s website, reviewing the way in which the job descriptions are displayed, what information could be added and looking at the overall design and user experience of the website. The board also held a separate session on the content of the website, examining each page to see how easy it is for students to find and read information.Pizza Break
During the discussion, the time flew by as we all got carried away with expressing our thoughts on how to keep up-to-date with students. Luckily for us, the team had organised for some pizzas to be delivered while we carried on talking amongst ourselves. I found it really interesting to see what other student’s views on the website were, and how certain design aspects can grab people’s attention differently. After completely stuffing our faces, we had a short interval before the next session began.
The next talk was about the RMP booklet they offer to students at careers fairs and universities, and it’s fair to say this was the most in-depth talk we had. During careers fairs, it’s important for RateMyPlacement to make a good impression because they are a brilliant source to help students in their search to find their perfect placement, and their booklet is a great example of this. So, we started off by looking at the design of the front cover – including the colours used, the material and the wording. In the end, a mutual decision was made to change the phrase ‘undergraduate employers’ to a phrase including the word ‘placement’ to make it clear straight away what the booklet is about. The colours will also be changed to style the booklet with a modernised look.
Wrapping up the day
The last discussion was based on their social media strategy, and so we went through each individual social platform to evaluate the content that’s produced. Instead of individually thinking about this, we were split up into 2 different groups to take part in an activity as if we were employees at RMP. We were given a fictitious budget of £50,000 for a year, and planned how we would spend this on promotional events such as University careers and fresher’s fairs. The budget could also be allocated towards their social media strategy, but we had to think more about how we would reconstruct it and what content we’d include.
I was partnered up with my colleague Jess and a student from UCL. We grouped our ideas together as to what activities would attract students towards an RMP stand, discussing prizes and raffles. In terms of social media, we raised the fact about video content and gifs sparking more engagement on social media platforms, and how we can incorporate this into promoting jobs.
To wrap up the day, we were given a little tour of their new office, where we came across a few familiar faces from the NUE Awards. It was interesting to see what the atmosphere of their office was like, and we loved the inspiring quotes they had plastered on the walls! I think the day was really aspiring to attend, as it allowed me to gain more experience than I’d expected. Discussing with other professionals about student’s views allowed me to improve my communication skills and confidence in meeting new people. The content of the day tested my design skills massively as I had to think on the spot about what I’d try to improve from a creative perspective whilst collaborating with everyone else’s input.
