Associate Study Manager & Clinical Data Scientist Review

Doing a placement year at GSK was such a valuable experience that will help me with the last year of my degree as well as choosing future careers and further education. Being in a building with other students of the same age is very useful as you can learn from each other and see how other departments and disease areas work.

My manager was lovely, and it seems all the other students' teams were also very friendly and welcoming. Everyone in the company is so willing to help you with any questions and provide career advice, with many employees giving up their valuable time to talk to me and explain their career path.

My manager provided the perfect balance of letting me get on with my own work and also providing any help when it was required. This allowed me to try and solve problems alone but knowing that support was available if I ever required it. The other students' managers were also very helpful and provided lots of guidance when required.

At the beginning, the clinical trial I was working on was still setting up I requested more work and was allocated to another study. As the months went on, I focused on two studies as the workload for them had built up. I strongly recommend asking for more work if you feel like you can handle it because I ended up gaining a lot from my placement as a result of working on multiple studies.

I was given the perfect amount of responsibility, especially towards the end of my placement. After gaining experience in meetings etc, I eventually led meetings, took minutes and presented to the multiple employees which advanced multiple skills and allowed me to be pushed and excel within my placement year.

I have developed a multitude of skills, such as communication skills, time management, independent working, prioritisation of tasks, presentation skills and general confidence and understanding of the pharmaceutical industry. It has been so valuable to understand the variety of jobs available after graduation, ranging from office to lab based and utilising your scientific backgrounds to different extents.

The general atmosphere was relaxed and calm, it didn't feel like a big company and even if people in your team are stressed, I personally didn't sense it. The hot desking worked really well and meant that you got to meet different people most days. There is a nice atmosphere around Christmas and Easter with lots of activities and competitions going on for charity etc. The social side wasn't as good within the office but the students did activities separately.

Myself and the other students found SRG in general not the best company to work with. They didn't provide too much support and all of the students found the holiday process quite confusing. However, overall this didn't effect my placement experience in the slightest, it was just quite inconvenient ever so often.

We were allowed to take days off work to go and see other departments and sites at GSK, which really made a difference to the year. We also got to attend a symposium which discussed the future of clinical trials and was very interesting. They were generally really happy to support further development and allowed students to explore the company throughout our year, which many permanent staff had not done.

As GSK is such a large company, it's difficult to easily get back in, however you do have an advantage over other students who have not done a placement. The graduate schemes are highly competitive and currently only exist in different departments to the one I worked in. However, throughout my year, we presented on the prospect of opening a graduate scheme for the department I worked in, which hopefully is an option post-graduation.

There were about 8 students in my building and we all got on really well, had lunch together every day and did activities outside of work. There is a scheme called IP unite which brings all the industrial placement students together across all of the UK sites (approximately 300 students), where there are christmas parties etc. The social scene amongst colleagues really depended on your department as some departments were younger and more social.

I chose to live further towards central London than where my office was located in order to gain more out of my placement year and fully experience living in London. Therefore, accommodation was not cheap and neither was travel, but I lived on my wages and as long as you don't spend money on extravagant things it's fine.

The nightlife near the office was not good but you are very close to London so you have unlimited options!

Relatively so, for students we were involved in STEM and the charity organisation which meant we did additional activities than our day to day jobs.