Project Management Student Review

I have enjoyed a significant chunk of my placement this year. I like being busy and having a high workload. When this was the case I really enjoyed my time at GSK. At other times I felt I had capacity to take on more work which lead to me enjoying those periods of time less. With the joint venture taking place my predicted/expected work had to be changed.

I feel valued by my immediate team. I don't particularly feel valued by the senior colleagues in my team. I feel that they don't have knowledge of the work I am doing and how I am benefitting the team. I get really good feedback from my manager about the work I am doing which is why I feel valued by my immediate team.

I had very good support on my work. My manager was always there to answer my questions and answered them thoroughly. I also had technical help from another team member. Without this help I wouldn't have been able to produce the work I have throughout the 12 months. I didn't have particularly good guidance from my managers managers

I don't think I was particularly busy. The work I was given was very interesting and kept me busy however due to having no time constraints and being self guided work it didn't push me very hard. For the middle 4 months of my placement I feel I had a good work load and was busy. It was either side of this period of time that I felt I had capacity to take on more work

I had a good level of responsibility. I was left to my own devices and was trusted to host meetings and build reports for senior members of staff. I wasn't given mundane tasks but given jobs that put me in a position of responsibility. The work and reports I was building could give significantly insight for senior leaders about GSKs consumer healthcare's pipeline hence why I felt I was given a good amount of responsibility.

A handful of skills I learnt during my placement will benefit my degree. I encountered a lot of problems when building some reports at work. I managed to problem solve and overcome these problems by conducting a lot of private research. This will benefit me in final year when I have to partake in a research project where all my work will be self directed and require private research and problem solving.

The atmosphere varied throughout the year. For the first 6 months I had a large team and there was a buzz in the office which helped motivate me to work. In January there was a restructure which led to people being re located. The lead to me being part of a smaller team which did make the atmosphere not as good for the second half of my placement

I feel the placement was set up well from the application point of view. However, I didn't have a handover and the previous placement student had a different job role to me. Organisational changes and events effected my work and made my manager have to rethink a number of her planned tasks. In terms of the payroll, asking for help and advice and general set up of the role (including the application process) I cant fault the organisation of SRG (the company that handle the placement students and roles)

My personal training and development was self directed. The company provided a few resources for me to explore in my free time if I was interested. In terms of training my training was all self directed on the job training. I know other placement students had more training events offered to them but maybe my role didn't require as much training

The placement was incredibly valuable in deciding my career path. I have realised that an office job/environment isn’t suited to me. It has solidified my future career path and that is being a teacher. The nature of my work is trying to take a large amount of complex data and simplify it into reports. This is similar to teaching so I have developed a few transferable skills. I feel the placement has been very useful as it highlighted what I don’t want to do. Due to this I don't have any insight to the future employment prospects within the organisation so cant comment. I do know that there is a very good well respected graduate program run by GSK

The social scene was there. My role as a student left me quite isolated due to not being in a department or working close to any other students. Its very dependant on your team. I know some other students have a much more lively social scene. A lot of students live with one another. The fact that I live at home makes it harder to meet other students and engage in the social side of GSK placement scheme. I did attend the events and have made friends through playing placement student football every Thursday. I had a good relationship with my colleagues and there was a social scene there

Living in London and socialising in London is expensive. I lived at home so didn't experience the cost of living while working at GSK Brentford. I felt the canteen was still very expensive for the quality of food so I tended to bring in my lunch from home. I did most of my socialising in central London which was expensive compared to what I was used to at Uni. It took a while to adjust to the new socialising costs.

In the area that I worked (Brentford) the nightlife was pretty non existent. However it is a quick train into central London where there is a much better nightlife. There are however three really nice pubs with a good atmosphere as they are three pubs heavily used by GSK staff.

I only was involved in two out of work activities however there were many different options. The options however could have been advertised better