Industrial Placement Student Review

I really enjoyed my placement in IT at GSK. Despite the job I was doing not being the career choice for me, I still enjoyed all the skills I gained, the people I met and the fantastic opportunities available. The year was so much fun and I would do it all over again.

I felt extremely valued by the colleagues in my team, everyone was so friendly and always happy to help if you needed it. The work I did was valuable to the team and I got to own a couple of projects whilst I was there, as well as helping out other members. It is extremely cliche but it is the people that make it considering you see them everyday and I was fortunate enough to be part of a fantastic team.

I was given a large amount of support, I had the support of my manager as well as a mentor as well as the buddying up scheme introduced. All of which had plenty of time to give me support and guidance when needed and helped me to get experience and skills elsewhere in the company.

Always busy, a few times I felt overwhelmed with the amount of work, but I prefer to stay busy as it made the day go faster and those period where there was too much I could just ask any of my colleagues for help. There were always things to do or other people to help out.

I was given a huge responsibility in my role. During my time I was involved in implement a new software within the business that had huge impacts to others if anything went wrong. I helped on projects, I owned projects and I got involved so I was able to make an impact.

The skills I have developed at GSK have been extremely valuable, its taught me to push and challenge myself as far as I can because there is always support available if you need it and it has given me so many examples of a time when I have done a certain skill, which I usually struggled on in prior interviews. I imagine applying for grad schemes will be much easier now.

Fantastic atmosphere and a culture where everyone is welcome! I have worked in a couple of other places and nothing compared to how welcoming and friendly the atmosphere was in the GSK office. The whole office is extremely inclusive and there is a sense that most people are happy to be there.

In terms of the overall work placement, I would say this was fairly unorganised. This is only due to placement students being contracted by SRG rather than GSK itself. I think most other students feel the same from the SRG perspective. My placement in terms of work available was quite organised in terms of instructions etc.

There is online training to complete although this is quite a boring task. However there are other training days to be involved with, for example a day where you find out more information about GSK and network with other new starters in teams. Due to only being contracted the didn't do any formal training that would have been useful for the job I was doing.

Very appealing, I would go back in a heartbeat. The progression looked appealing from speaking to several different people and the opportunities available seemed to be exciting and involved lots of support and training, which is what I thought could be improved on for the placement scheme. I met a few graduates and other students that came in through the direct route, who all seemed to be enjoying themselves and recommended the steps they had taken.

Again, my team were fantastic and I went out a few times with them and got involved in different activities. The social scene amongst other placement students, I would say wasn't as good, many of the students came from the same uni's and so groups did things together outside of work.

The living costs were quite expensive, however it is doable on the salary offered and it is expected considering it is London. I moved in with other industrial placement students about 20 minutes from the office which was a walk-able distance so managed to save some money on transport costs. The socialising costs were also quite high, although there are many reasonably priced places to go, just need to find them.

The pubs around Brentford and a few bars in Ealing were quite good. Although if you wanted to go to an actual nightclub, going into central London would be better. Now the night tube is up and running this would be much easier to go out as the cost of a taxi to get home was very expensive. Went to a few nightclubs in Central London and they were really good and lively.

So many opportunities outside the job role. My manager always supported me to go out and try new things and get involved as much as possible.