Summer Student Review

I really enjoyed my time at GSK, it was a great insight into the pharmaceutical industry and further spurred my interest in working within the pharmaceutical industry.

The staff I worked with were great, very friendly and went out of their way to make me feel welcome and feel like a valuable member of their team.

My manager was very supportive and had weekly meetings to see how I was progressing and if I had any queries and concerns. Furthermore my manager made sure I got the most out of my time at GSK and organised for me to spend a couple of hours (sometimes days) in other areas of the business so I could gain a real insight into most aspects of the business wish I found very useful.

At the start I found myself quite bored with nothing to do but as the placement progressed and once I had received the required training I went on to carry out some of the task that other members of the team carry out on a regular basis.

During my placement I was given a large amount of responsibility as I was trained on how to investigate complaints on some of the products and was thus responsible for carrying out my own investigations and writing replies to the market.

I feel that I further developed my teamwork ability which was made easy by the fact that everyone was so kind and welcoming. I feel that the skills I have gained during this placement will bode well in my future as a pharmacist but also as a person.

The atmosphere in the office was great. There were five of us in the office and everyone was so friendly and welcoming. I don't think there was a day where we didn't laugh at least once.

I thought the overall placement was organised to a good level, especially with regards to my manager organising me time in other areas of the business, however with regards to the advertising and recruitment of summer placements I feel like this could have been organised better, especially with the areas within the business in which you could carry out a summer placement. I think there should have been a brief description of the different areas and what sort of things you would be doing on a daily basis within that business area during your placement.