IT Industrial Placement Review

For me as a Computer Science student, working in the head office was slightly boring. My programming talents and skills were not used to their full extent as most of heavy-duty programming is outsourced to India, leaving me with creating VBA scripts and SQL queries. A business IT student would probably be 100% satisfied.

Most of people at my work did not know what a student was supposed to do, so the expectations were quite low. However, I have managed to exceed them by a fair amount, earning respect and certain reputation among colleagues. You don't have a lot of respect early on, but you can easily earn it.

In my division, placements were relatively new, so there wasn't a solid plan for a placement student. However, whenever I asked for something interesting to do - I was immediately granted what I wanted.

I had a nigh-perfect balance of workload/stress, but only when I was doing things I was interested in. In-between, there were months of boring and repetitive tasks that I would never like to do again.

As I said before, there wasn't any solid plan for my placement, and there were no expectations of a university student, so I didn't have a lot of things to claim responsibility for.

While I did not gain many skills in the field I wish to specialise in after graduation, I am glad that I have taken this placement, as GSK's enormous structure allows you to move between divisions, meet new people and improve skills you find necessary.

It's a large corporate structure and it comes with all the business and frantic jumping deadline-to-deadline for some of the high officials. But in-between, there was always time for friendly banter and small-talk. All the employees were very friendly and supportive towards me throughout the whole placement.

There wasn't a solid plan for my placement, but it was relatively easy to request things you wanted to work, and nothing was denied. There are however some little difficulties with days-off organisation and such, as students are employed via third-party company.

GSK tried to enlist me into their Future Leader Programme, but I have declined it because I do not want to work in business IT. I feel that students do benefit from working here.

GSK has a Future Leaders Programme - a 3-year contract that is, by the end, guarantees to land you a permanent managerial position in the company. I wasn't interested in it too much.

The inside Industrial Placement Unite organisation made a lot of events for students throughout the year, including catered Christmas and Boat parties.

Fair.

It's a business district next to a sleepy suburban area. I haven't seen any nightlife. Nor I was looking for one.

I guess.