Validation Leader Review

I enjoyed my placement fairly much. I have learnt a great deal about the company, and the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. I was very grateful for the development opportunities presented to me by the industrial placements UNITE group. I have also enjoyed meeting new people from a huge variety of academic and social backgrounds.

At times I felt as though I was not a valued member of my team, and was given quite mundane work to do. I was not very happy about this and escalated this which resulted in me being given some more responsibility. I think the culture of most of the people in the department I worked in can sometimes be to see the placement student as an extra pair of hands to do the boring work. However, there are some individuals who I felt did value me and my potential for contribution.

From the start my management were quite passive with my training, a lot of this was left to my own gumption to ask for help from other members of the team when I needed it. Although when I did ask for help, everyone was really cooperative and nice, I was often really scared to speak up and ask for help as I felt a bit like an outsider within the team.

At the start of my placement, I had way too much free time during the day to the point where I was struggling to fill the time and would dread going to work since I would have nothing to do. After I escalated this, my workload has picked up. Due to the nature of the job I performed within the business we often experienced peaks and troughs in our demand for work however I felt that my peaks and troughs were much more exaggerated than other members of the team; that is to say that when I was busy I felt like I had more work than anyone else was trying to juggle, but when I wasn't busy I was the least occupied out of the team. I do think that the workload within my team could have been balanced better.

Naturally at the start of placement I was given very little responsibility, but as the placement progressed I was given more and more responsibility. I don't think I have an issue with the amount of responsibility I was given, I just feel that it would have been better if I had been given small responsibility at the start and worked up to leading a whole project myself instead of just kind of being dumped in at the deep end at times.

The training I have received will be of quite limited assistance to my degree as i was in an office role based heavily on review of documentation. I will however be taking the report writing skills I have gained and applying these to my university essays etc. I also feel I have more context for the wider importance of my degree now. in addition I feel that the time management skills and having become adapted to the routine of working from 9-5 will benefit me in terms of my organisation when I return to university. With respect to my future career, I have also become confident with professional communication and I have now got in depth experience in working within the quality function of a regulated business, which I feel will be an excellent skill to have in any future career.

The general atmosphere in my office was not overly exciting. I was the youngest member of my team, which is not an issue, but I felt that the majority of the individuals I worked with were not interested in anything other than professional relationships with their colleagues. In contrast, I felt the offices/teams that my placement friends worked in were far more social and interactive, potentially due to their average age being lower. I did enjoy working with some members of my team and hope to keep in contact with them after I leave the company.

from the start of my placement I felt like no one was really prepared for my arrival, despite a previous placement student having just left. There was no handover between herself and I, which I felt contributed to the chaos. For the first few weeks, there was nothing for me to do except a lot of training. I am really grateful that some team members took me under their wings and guided me through the first few months of placement because without them I feel I would have been very bored and very underutilized.

In terms of my actual team, I didn't really have a lot of development opportunities. However, that is not to say I haven't had development opportunities provided by the company, I certainly have, especially those which are tailored especially for the placement students. We have had the opportunity to attend many informational talks and great development sessions. However, I would have liked to have more development opportunities within my team, for example team development sessions based on better communication or team working.

The company offers some great graduate schemes which I am definitely interested in. I want to stress that I don't think my personal experience working as a placement student for GSK is an overly accurate reflection of the general placement experience. I know the company invests heavily in future talent. There is an excellent scheme where managers can recommend you for a graduate scheme if they feel that you would be suited to the role based on your placement year. I would be thrilled to undertake a graduate scheme with GSK despite my placement year not fully meeting all of my expectations.

Yes my site had a large community of placement students, graduates and apprentices so there was a lot of social acitvities to get involved with. We have a canteen where most placement students would meet up for lunch. The IP UNITE site ambassadors regularly organised nights out, and other activities during the year. I have made some friends for life in other placement students who I met in the canteen.

Being just outside of London, Ware was pretty expensive in terms of accommodation with the average monthly rent (from what I could tell) being in the region of around 550 pound a month, often just for one furnished room in a shared house. For socialising, ware is a very small town and there is not a lot to do there, however there are 4 trains per hour into London for about 7 pounds with a rail card, so it wasn't too expensive to get into London and took around 30-45 minutes depending where you got off. In terms of shops, there are two medium supermarkets, asda and Tesco, which are fairly standardly priced for the south of England.

There are no nightclubs in ware however there are many pubs, and a couple of cocktail bars which do have happy hours where cocktails are 2-4-1. There is a good range of restaurants in ware and nearby Hertford. Hertford has two night clubs and is around 10 minutes drive away from Ware.

The IP unite site ambassadors organised social events. There is also a competition between the early talent groups in the early summer which is concluded with a social gathering. There is a sports and social club associated with the site. There was also a big emphasis on becoming a STEM ambassador.