Pharmacovigilance Scientist Review

I very much enjoyed my placement. The work was both challenging and enjoyable, and my other colleagues made me feel very welcome. My placement really helped me to develop my personal skills, which will go on to serve me very well in my future employment wherever that may be. The one downside is that the work was sometimes monotonous.

I felt very valued by my colleagues; they treated me like an adult and were very friendly and welcoming. The work they gave me to do was pitched at a good level considering my status as an industrial placement student. One downside is that while most colleagues were very friendly and welcoming, it would have been nice if a few more people had been proactive in introducing themselves to me.

The support and guidance I was given by my manager were superb. She had weekly meetings with me to check up on how I was doing and was always ready to offer advice and support. She was very generous and understanding, which I very much appreciated. The person who supervised me with the work I was doing on a day-to-day basis was good but sometimes didn’t check up on me enough.

My workload greatly varied, sometimes I was very busy and sometimes I didn’t have enough work to do. This is partly because my supervisor didn’t always assign me enough work to do, but it also due to the fact that my department couldn’t control the amount of work received at all.

I was given quite a lot of responsibility while on placement. I was given the same tasks as many of the other scientists, but my work was checked more carefully once I’d completed it than the others. If I had been given more responsibility, the work would have been more varied, but I understand that the management didn’t want to train me up if I was only going to be there for one year.

The skills I developed will greatly assist me in my degree studies and in my future employment. This is because the skills I developed, for example, interpretative skills, are transferable and crucial for success in every area of study or employment. I couldn’t develop every type of skill, for example, laboratory work, but that is simply because of the type of industrial placement I undertook.

The atmosphere in my office was professional, yet not cold or distant. I very much liked the atmosphere of the office, because it was open-plan with a hot-desking policy, with about 300 people per floor. This meant that people were always walking about and there was always a certain degree of activity in the office. I liked this, because it wasn’t too loud or off-putting to be a distraction, but meant helped me to work because otherwise, I would have felt quite isolated.

The overall work placement was not set up very well. This is because I and one other student consisted of the first ever industrial placement cohort in the department. When we arrived, several key people had not received sufficient information about the work we’d be doing, which meant our initial training period was delayed.

My company didn’t really encourage me to pursue any personal development. Any personal development endeavours I embarked upon was because of my own personal desire to do so, no one encouraged or provided a means for me to enhance my personal development. I think this is because I was not a permanent member of staff.

GSK is a great company to work for, there are lots of different opportunities available and it treats its staff very well, so it would definitely be a company with which I would consider pursuing a career. It is a very large company, with a wide variety of roles available, so I’m sure there will be something that will potentially interest me after I graduate from university.

There wasn’t a very good social scene amongst fellow placement students and companies. I ate lunch with industrial placement students from other departments for about two-thirds of the year, but this gradually petered out over the course of the year. We never saw each other outside of work, but I think this is mostly because the majority of us commuted into work and lived long distances from each other.

I do not know what the cost of living and socializing was in the area in which I worked because I did neither in the area in which I worked over the course of my placement year. However, one of the other industrial placement students lived in the area in which we worked and he said the cost of living was quite low.

I do not know what the nightlife was like in the area in which I worked because I never went out at night in the area in which I worked over the course of my placement year. However, one of the other industrial placement students who lived in the area said it was awful.

My company didn’t really encourage me to pursue any opportunities to get involved . Any personal development endeavours I embarked upon was because of my own personal desire to do so, no one encouraged or provided a means for me to enhance my personal development. I think this is because I was not a permanent member of staff.