Communications Executive Review

My placement was within GSK's HIV business, called ViiV Healthcare. The year far surpassed my expectations, giving me a variety of different projects and tasks and constantly stretching me. I was able to guide my placement in the direction of my interests, and get involved in high level meetings. I was treated as a full time valued employee throughout.

My colleagues themselves were fantastic and have always treated me like a valued member of the team. However, I think that GSK as a whole could do more to look after it's placement students. Placement roles are consistently as challenging and time consuming as graduate roles, but pay very little in comparison. There is essentially no sick pay and placement students are not allowed to participate in the company survey. I feel GSK could do more to include and appreciate the students who work so hard for so little!

I met with my manager every week on a Friday to discuss how things were going. She ensured I was constantly being stretched and encouraged me always to be thinking about where I wanted to go after the role had finished, which helped me think about my career. At the same time, I was not micromanaged and was trusted to complete tasks autonomously.

This varies because of the nature of a communications role. Sometimes things can go quiet and you can catch up on all the background tasks, and other times a press release needs to go out and we have new data announcements all on the same day as a big HIV conference etc. If ever I needed more work there would have been plenty!

In comms everything has to go through an approvals process so nothing can be fully autonomous, however I was trusted to take the lead on a number of projects and essentially decide and run the content. I got to be the voice of a global HIV company and thousands of people would have read the words I wrote!

In terms of returning to uni, I hope I am now better at time management. However, working for yourself (studying) is very different to working for a company when you enjoy what you're doing and see the outputs faster. I mostly learned how to be professional and form professional relationships, as well as being able to stand up for myself and take control of the person I wanted to be at work. I didn't realise I'd need to find out who my 'professional self' was.

GSK's HIV business is vibrant and fast paced - at times people are running around the office and the culture is unique and very exciting. We had new drug launches whilst I was there and the attitude of positivity and modern thinking is obvious. Employees are all diverse and accepting - the nature of HIV is in supporting LGBTQ+ communities in a big way and that's clearly the attitude of the people who work at ViiV.

I think it was quite well organised from the GSK side, though the placement itself is actually run by another company called SRG, who are absolutely impossible to work with. They impose a number of stupid rules and make life incredibly difficult for placement students. I was very disappointed with them.

GSK isn't very good at retaining its placement students. Sure, you can fast track the odd step or two for applying for their graduate programmes, but there are genuinely a few students who absolutely shine during their time at GSK, and this goes unnoticed. There are so many placement students than you never feel particularly important to the company as a whole, as an individual.

Quite appealing - but like I say I don't think GSK try very hard to retain their placement students, and I feel that another company could offer me more. There's a graduate programme called FLP but it seems that its very hard to get this role straight out of university, which is what I would be after if I was going to go onto a development scheme like that.

There's a group called IPUNITE which supposedly organises socials for the placement students. There were two successful cross-site socials throughout the year and a few smaller ones at the beginning, however the pool of students is so large that people quickly make their own friendship groups and fail to socialise beyond.

It's a little out of London so not as bad as it could be. There's not an awful lot going on in the area but it's quite quick to get into central.

There is very little right by work, but decent transport links into London.

I think there are quite a lot of volunteering opportunities and the odd sports club.