Associate Study Manager Review

My year-long placement with GSK was fun yet challenging. My responsibilities ensured I was always pushing myself and developing my skill set further, while my colleagues and fellow students made the experience social and enjoyable.

Every member of my department, regardless of role or level, was welcoming and friendly right from the first day. My opinions and insight were always welcome, and team members would often come to me for help using certain tools. This made me feel extremely valuable and respected.

I had weekly one-to-one meetings with both my manager and mentor. This ensured I was always able to ask questions or for advice, but I was not micromanaged.

The business of my day varied from day to day and from one month to the next. The nature of my job role was that certain periods of time were extremely busy, and certain times were extremely quiet. My work mainly came from my supervisor or an ad hoc basis and from the countries I worked with on a daily basis. Leading up to milestones I had more work than when the milestones were a few months off.

As the placement went on I gained more and more responsibility. This is understandable as a knowledge of the role and the study was required in order to complete certain tasks or roles, and this knowledge could only be gained by working within the study. By the end of the placement my work day was self-run and I was confident enough to lead various meetings.

My placement does not particularly help with my degree in biochemistry as the role is office based and I do not work with scientific information on a regular basis. The confidence, organisation and presentation skills I have gained will assist with certain areas of my degree, and will certainly help me in any job role I get after university.

My department was very friendly and lively. The open-plan set-up of the office encouraged team bonding, however the team was also very respectful and stayed quiet when a team member was on a phone call.

The placement was very well organised. Being employed by an agency rather than GSK itself did cause some continuity issues and occasionally made me feel like I did not have the same benefits as a GSK employee, however on a day-to-day basis this was not noticed.

I received all of the possible training and more. I was required to take the usual company training courses, however we also received some specially set-up training, such as a CV workshop.

There are many options for a graduate scheme and there is also direct entry employment. I did not get through to the graduate scheme however there is still a possibility of the direct entry.

At the beginning most of the students were social and events were frequently organised. Toward the end of the placement the other students were not so social and therefore the events became less frequent. The student body at GSK, IP Unite, organised a few good events including a Christmas Ball and a Boat Party.

I lived at home and commuted in, which cost about £40 per week in petrol. Socialising was relatively expensive as the location is Greater London.

There was no nightlife in the town where I worked. The nearest club was a few miles away in the next town which was a cheap taxi away, however was not the nicest of areas.

There were a few social events throughout the year.