IT Placement Review

I enjoyed my placement a great deal. Extremely professional environment to work in, with a friendly no blame culture and perks on offer.

This varied a great deal. Generally the more you worked with them the more valued they made you felt. I felt extremely valued by my line manager who often would give me work that had it not been completed correctly would have had a negative impact on her reputation and project work. Senior management gave the impression they wanted to make time for me however in reality often other things would take priority. This could become extremely frustrating.

At first my line manager seemed a bit unclear what to do with me. There was no set instructions from a "placement team" as such. However the key for me was setting objectives which then allowed my manager to get me involved with work that aligned to these areas. Once these were set my line manager was excellent as providing opportunities and supporting me through them. Became as much a mentor as a manager.

Very but this was at my own request. I found I got bored quickly when I didn't have work to do - but every time I asked for more work it was given.

This grew significantly as my placement went on and I grew in confidence. If I wanted more it was given.

Significantly. I would strongly recommend anyone to take a placement year. From the basics such as learning to be organised through to how IT is actually used in a large global company and even learning how to use a leading BI analytics tool.

Professional. My team was very middle aged and this was reflective. It wasn't slides and mini-fridges that you might expect at a tech start up but it was a nice place to be.

There is no real "plan" or "team" that oversees all the placements at GSK. The down side of this is that when I first joined my manager was unclear what to do with me. It really depends on each student and manager. For me this turned out well however other students weren't so lucky.

I was incorporated fully into all the team training sessions. I was also lucky enough to be the first before anyone else to complete a training course in leading BI analytics tool that the team was introducing to the business.

This is a big problem with the GSK placement scheme as it currently exists. They employ significantly more placement students than graduates and therefore very few make it onto the graduate scheme. They make you do an additional round of online testing as a quick way for them to cut the numbers down, not recognising any of the work you've done over the year. However having GSK on my CV has been in-valuable in securing a summer internship and graduate scheme since.

There is a society type group called "IP Unite" however in my year this cliqued quite early on.

London so expensive.

Close to central London.

Every so often there would be opportunities to get involved with volunteering. However often there was limited spaces on these and the selection process seemed to be on who knew the organiser best.