Insights Executive Review

I really enjoyed it because the people were extremely welcoming and friendly, the work I was given was fun and interesting and insightful. I made a lot of connections across the business and have kept in touch through linked in, this will allow me to get a foot in the door in the next year.

I felt very valued, this was a particular perk of the placement at gsk. I worked across two teams and both made me feel valuable and of use, they would take my opinion into account and act on it and if I had a question it would be answered quickly.

I was given a lot of support and guidance from my managers and supervisors, we would have one to ones every week where she would go over what I needed to work on and how I can get to the next stage of my development plan, allowing me to progress.

If varied highly and hugely, some days I was very busy and barely moved for the 8 working hours and some I had to find other things to do. Luckily it allowed me to go and talk to other people across the business so having time off was a good thing.

Towards the end of my placement I was effectively managing projects with multiple stakeholders by myself. This allowed me to talk to external and internal people and work with them efficiently. I had to set up Skype calls and meetings with them and my manager was not very involved by the end.

This placement wasn’t very relevant to my biochemistry degree however it does provide a lot of translational skills such as organisation, presenting, teamwork, team management and a host of other skills. I will be able to take these forward with me into my final year and graduate positions following this.

Atmosphere was good and fantastic, everyone was very chatty and friendly meaning that I felt welcomed every morning. They knew when to be serious and when not to be serious and kept a good balance between the two, this meant people worked well but also felt like there wasn’t lots of pressure.

Gsk have had thousands of placement students across many years and so they know what they’re doing. It was very well set up and I had a direct manager, integrated into the team well and had roles and responsibilities from the first day which was really good, would highly recommend

I had a personal development plan which allowed me to focus on specific things I had to improve on. Unfortunately the grad scheme is still very hard to access from a placement so in terms of future development I would say there is a lot of work to be done.

They are appealing but really not that accessible, placement students get the same chances as external people despite working in the business for a year, it doesn’t feel like much is invested in the actual student as opposed to using them for cheap labour at times, we had to do jobs no one else wanted to do.

There are about 40 placement students so the social scene is really good, we have an IP page where events are organised and managed and invited to the Christmas ball and summer parties as well. It is very well run so definitely a big perk of working at this company.

Working in Surrey and west London it is extremely expensive, one third of my salary went immediately on rent payments and going to normal pubs was very expensive. We had to live cheaply and spend wisely but could then afford to splash out at times in nice modern restaurants and bars.

I lived in Egham and worked on weybridge so nightlife was few and far between. We could travel into London to go out but rarely happened due to transport costs. I often went back to uni and so would go out with friends there most of the time for 21st etc.

There was football and badminton clubs run by people at work which I participated in. I was also involved in charities and organised theee peaks challenge and also tough mudder as well as bake sales and fancy dress competitions. This was a good aside from the general working life at gsk