Regulatory affairs Review

I highly enjoyed my placement year, GSK has a fantastic ethos which is echoed strongly. The site I worked on was very friendly and as placement students we were invited to all the opportunities as the other members of staff. There was a strong community of placement students which made my time here very enjoyable also.

My colleagues within my team were very friendly and even though I was a placement student I felt included within the team spirit. I was able to support them on tasks and vice versa. I was able to also reach out to them whenever I had issues or questions that needed addressing.

My manager was supportive and approachable so whenever I encountered any issues that needed to be escalated in my project I felt comfortable talking to them about it. During times where I had a low workload, my manager would provide me with projects that I could assist on which gave me greater responsibilities.

I was fairly busy on a daily basis as I had deadlines to adhere to weekly. During the beginning of my placement my workload was fairly low but I was able to assist my team on tasks from which I gained a lot of knowledge which would help me later on when I had a high workload.

Once I had completed my training phase and had built up the knowledge I was given equal workload as the other members of my team. It took a while to build up the knowledge however I was able to shadow members of my team with greater experience and assist on their work. Once I had gained the knowledge I could independently carry out these tasks myself

This placement year for me has been a great development of my confidence, presentation skills, teamwork and organisation skills. These attributes will help me greatly with my final year of studies and my future job prospects. I am highly interested to working in the same field and this experience has been invaluable to me.

My office was so friendly, there was a great team spirit and this was the same for all teams on site. There were a lot of team events that occurred throughout the year and as placement students we were included in these as well. My team were so welcoming and I felt comfortable settling in.

The application process was well set up and once we had joined there were clear training processes that took a while but once completed prepared us for the year ahead. There were days set up for placement students where we could learn about different departments that worked on site. Also we had lots of talks from people on the GSK graduate program which gave us a lot of insight into what opportunities were available post- graduation.

There were a lot of opportunities I was included in my placement year for example volunteering at career fair which was really exciting. We also had the opportunity to visit other sites for example the ones in Brentford and manufacturing sites such as Stevenage or Maidenhead. It was highly encouraged to network with people outside of your department.

GSK has fantastic values and opportunities, it is very evident that they place a lot of training and effort into each student. Being a large company, there is an abundance of opportunities and job roles to learn about and it is encouraged to network and talk to people in other job roles especially as placement students.

My site had about 30 placement students and at the beginning there was a lot of social events. It was easy to talk to everyone. Some people lived at their family homes and others lived together as they had to re-locate but were still able to join social events. This whole year is really what you make of it.

Quite expensive - I know students who had to rent a flat/house close to the site and the rent it slightly more expensive compared to our uni accommodation. However it is possible with the salary you are earning. The socialising is quite expensive in the area but people still did go out a fair bit.

You could easily travel to London via the train in 40 minutes so it provided great opportunities. However in the surrounding area it was quite expensive and London or Guilford was the nearest area that you could go either one took about 30-40 mins to travel to via train or driving.

There were as all the placement students were very friendly and we all knew one another. Especially in the beginning of the placement year there was a great atmosphere for socialising.