Industrial Placement Student Review

Really enjoyed the experience and all the different opportunites I received. However found laboratory work sometimes repetitive and probably isn't for me in the long term.

Some colleagues were very good at involving me and seemed to show a lot of interest in my work whereas others treated me just as a student and didnt appear to value my input or abilities

My manager was a very intelligent and great at giving advise when discussing scientific issues and my data however he wasn't very hands on in the lab and I was given very little guidance or help in practical task, even at the start of the year when I had very little prior experience.

I had a really good balance of laboratory work, scientific meetings and presentations and data analysis etc. There were some points throughout the year when there were very tight deadlines and I was very busy however there were also other point when I had much less work and it was a bit more relaxed.

I feel I was given quite a lot of responsibility. I had to do a lot of my work independently and was required to present and discuss my data infront of colleagues. I had to manage my own deadlines and plan my work accordingly and I was also sometimes required to teach other people (including full time members of staff) experimental techniques.

I have learnt a lot this year not only in terms of lab skills and scientific knowledge but also more generic skills, such as presenting, communicating, managing, organising etc that would help me with any future career.

My office was very quite, no one spoke very often and there was not alot of team spirit however I am aware that this is not always the case in GSK and there were several other offices where everyone was a lot more relaxed and chatty.

The Placement was set up very well by GSK and everything ran very smoothly. There were several issues throughout the year with SRG (the company responsible for our payments and holiday etc) but this was no fault of GSKs

The company ran lectures, career days, team building events etc that we could get involved in. They also sorted out trip to the RSC to see seminars. They also allowed IP students to run lots of different experiments and try many different assays (some of which were quite expensive)

There are very few graduate entry jobs or jobs in general in GSK at the moment however this is the case across all Pharmaceutical companies. There are several graduate schemes and IP students can be fast tracked onto these however there are very limited places (5/6 for each) and a lot of applicants (900+) so competition is very high.

There were nearly 100 placement students based in Stevenage and we all went out regularly and did lots of stuff in our free time together

Stevenage is not too expensive however there are very limited options therefore several times we went out in london which was then obviously a lot more expensive.

There is only a few bars and 1 club in stevenage so the nightlife is quite limited however London is onyly 15mins away by train and has a lot more options

There were lots of different options outside of work including volunteering, sports, evening classes, dance classes etc.