IT Placement Student Review

GSK has been a fantastic place to work in terms of giving experience of a large multinational company. Especially working in the HQ, there are so many events and opportunities to get involved with and people to meet across so many different areas of the business. However, what brought my rating down was the day-to-day work itself which I did not find challenging and sometimes quite menial.

From my experience, everyone at GSK treats placement students with respect and values them as employees. I was put on important projects and given real work which impacted the business. Over the course of the year, I was given more responsibility and became a point of reference for a certain piece of software I was working with.

Management support was excellent. The team I worked with were approachable, friendly and transparent. Every placement student at GSK also has the opportunity to receive a mentor outside their direct team who offers impartial support and coaching. I found this resource very useful, especially when discussing any difficulties I was having within the workplace.

I was not very busy on a day-to-day basis and this was the main bad point of my placement year. There were periods of the year which I had little to do despite raising with management and some of the tasks I was given were menial such as sending emails which were quick to complete and therefore left me quite bored.

I was given a great deal of responsibility during my placement and was able to lead and manage many different projects over the course of my year. I was also given a lot of responsibility in terms of the scope of my role and was encouraged to express a preference of which projects I wanted to get involved with and which ones I didn't.

The skills developed will help me very little in my degree studies as the work I was doing was not very challenging and I did not learn a great deal of hard skills. However, I picked up a lot of soft skills such as improved communication, networking skills and writing reports which could possibly help me beyond university in a corporate job if I choose to take my career in that direction.

The atmosphere in the office was generally upbeat and relaxed. At the GSK HQ, it is smart working which means you don't have a set desk which can sometimes mean that you are interacting with different people on different days. Although daunting, this can be quite helpful for networking. There were numerous events throughout the building on a regular enough basis to keep the mood high over the course of the year.

The overall scheme was very well set up. There are over 100 placement students at the HQ of GSK and therefore it is well organised and the placement scheme is well understood by most employees. However, in terms of the workload, this is poorly organised. There did not seem to be set plans at the beginning of the placement of what work and projects students would be involved with and managers did not seem to keep track of workload. This resulted in periods of 'nothing to do'.

Over the course of my year at GSK, the business funded two qualifications for me to complete which were related to my role. These were completely paid for by the business. In terms of soft skills, there were also many different opportunities to get involved such as public speaking workshops and networking events. There was also a large resource of online training courses which were assessable for placement students to improve different skills.

Very few placement students get on to the graduate scheme for GSK. Placement students are not 'fast-tracked' into roles and have to go through a very similar application process to external candidates (written application form, online tests, assessment centre). However, there is an opportunity to enter directly into a role which is not the grad scheme and from networking during the placement year, a placement student can have a considerable advantage.

There are over 100 placement students at GSK House and therefore the social scene was fantastic. There is a society type organisation that organises and runs events for the placement students which at the beginning is a good way to get to know others. However, over the course of the year, we also organised social events ourselves and by the end of the placement, I would say that I knew most of the other placement students working in GSK HQ.

London is expensive, however GSK HQ is based in Brentford which is in west London and considerably cheaper. If you choose to live close to work, the living costs can be cheaper as you do not need to pay for transport to work (you can walk or cycle). Socialising in London is expensive, especially getting taxi's home and entry to the clubs.

There is no nightlife in the close area of GSK HQ, however central London is relatively easily accessible and this has an amazing nightlife. There are also lots of bars and pubs in London and often we would go out for drinks after work instead of going to clubs or similar. Nights out tended to happen at weekends instead of weekdays which is a change from university.

During my placement year, there was a netball team and football team for placement students to get involved with outside of work. There was also events organised by GSK specifically for placement students such as nights out, bowling and ice skating. There was also volunteering opportunities to get involved with. Every placement student at GSK is entitled to an 'orange day' once a year when they can take a day off work to go and spend the day volunteering in the local community.