Service/Technical Analyst Review

You will have your ups and downs, but overall more ups than downs. Don’t get put off at the start... there’s a lot of mandatory training, but things get better afterwards.

You might meet the odd person that doesn’t really value placement students, but everyone else (99.9%) really values placements students.

Great support and guidance from all I worked with. Would also highly recommend getting involved with Coaching/Mentoring schemes.

Unfortunately the work comes and goes. So some days you might be bored (good opportunity to get on with any university reports etc), but other times you’ll be so busy that there’s not enough hours in the day!

You obviously won’t be given much power to start with, but once you’ve learnt the ropes and proved yourself it’s great. I was regularly chairing meetings, taking decisions, and giving approval on things that probably should have been done by my manager instead. I’d earnt his trust.

Real world experience > Classroom.

Atmosphere was fine. GSKHouse has over 3000 people in it, so obviously your mileage may vary. Sometimes you might find that open plan is a bit tedious (people talking loudly whilst you’re on a conference call and there’s no meeting rooms available), but at other times you’ll value meeting new people.

H/R seem to know what they're doing, and there's a good handover between outgoing and incoming students.

Everyone will get GSK internal training. You might have to wait until the second half of your placement (due to budget years), but I received some proper accredited training and certification. That’s now on my CV and I’ve got a pretty certificate!

There’s lots of redundancies for permanent staff currently, and lots of staff are being replaced with contractors (both here and offshore).

Great!

The GSK Placement Student wage is very low. And on-top of the general lowness, there is no London weighting for the GSKHouse site. No GSK students will have loads of spare cash, but those paying London rents will be particulary worse off. Last time I checked, I was making £15 “profit” per week after paying my necessary outgoings. This is something that generic GSK staff know about and feel sorry for us... one of my colleagues when chatting socially and finding out where we lived and how much rent we paid said “How can you afford that on the IP student wage!?”... but evidently they are not the decision makers on the salary. Just to put it in perspective, the hourly wage that an independent IT/Networks contractor could get for working at any business is more than the daily wage of an IP student. Also, you will not be applicable for the GSK bonus scheme (normally 10-15%). Also note that food/drink on-site is not subsidised at all, only GSK products (Lucozade/MaxiMuscle etc) are sold at a discount.

Get the tube/train into London and you're sorted.

GSK staff get free entry to lots of places around town (some museums, Kew Gardens, etc), and there’s lots of activities within GSK. Football, tennis courts, running club, Christian Community at lunch, etc etc.