Finance Capabilities and Early Talent Review

I’ve had a great year at GSK and really enjoyed my placement. The people in my team made me feel very welcome and I settled in very quickly. Everyone I’ve worked with at GSK has been really helpful and I have learnt a lot about the business and the industry.

My colleagues made me feel really valued as I was treated like a normal employee as opposed to a placement student. They recognised when I had done something well and also always provided me with useful feedback and which was beneficial to my development over the year as it gave me areas to improve.

I had several managers over the year which meant I got to experience several different management styles and each one supported me throughout. I always felt that I could go to them if I was struggling or needed help. They also offered me career advice and guidance and helped me connect with different people in the business to build my network.

The amount of work I had varied each week depending on what was happening. I think there was usually a good amount of work to keep me busy however, if I felt that I didn’t have much to do I would talk to my manager and see what other projects I could get involved in.

I think I was given a good amount of responsibility on my placement as when I first started I was thrown in the deep end with several large projects. This enabled me to learn quickly and demonstrate my capability. This meant that I was then asked to do other large projects.

I found it extremely useful to get the experience of working in a corporate environment as this is something I hadn’t had before and this then makes it easier to put the things you learn at university into context. This means I feel more confident going back to uni having had this experience and will now be able to apply what I’ve learnt.

Our working environment is quite open and informal but means that it is easy to meet other people around the office. I felt this atmosphere aided me in doing my work as I felt I could go to anyone for help and it was nice having the support of others around me.

I think the placement year as a whole was organised well as we were kept well informed about the process throughout. I would have liked to have had some more information about my job and team before I started. I found it useful having regular talks/emails from SRG about things like tax, pay, holidays etc.

There was plenty of training that I could participate in which was especially useful when I first started. The training helped me find out more about GSK as a whole as well as the business function I was in. It also helped me develop my excel skills through the various training courses online.

I feel that now I’ve spent a year here I’ve learnt so much about the company and the different parts to it. The company have told us about all the options available either via direct entry or the graduate programme. As it is such a huge company there are so many opportunities available.

At the beginning there were socials which allowed me to meet other placement students in other business functions. I think the Christmas and Boat party were especially good as it brought everyone together in one place and I was still meeting new people at these events. It is easy to get into central London so this helped with socialising after work.

I think the cost of living was relatively high which is why I decided to live at home and commute to work. I think they were in line with other London rent prices but this seemed high for the area as it’s not central London. I think the general costs of socialising were normal for London.

Brentford is relatively quiet with a few good pubs and restaurants close to work which we would go to. These pubs were close to the station which was useful. As GSK has a shuttle bus to the tube station this meant that access to central London was easy so you could go out there instead.

There were lots of opportunities to get involved in activities as we had Orange days where we volunteered for a day within the local community. There were also trips and tours to the other sites organised. Outside of work we didn’t do that many activities as there’s not a lot around Brentford.