Supply Chain Review

My role is within the wider logistics team. I currently support two of the logistics functions across the team. On a day to day basis my activities include, running various reports, raising purchase orders, contacting suppliers, chasing overdue orders, analyzing site metrics to create personalized reports for managers. I also work on improvement projects and support other teams where the gaps exists. I also lead daily meetings and prepare content for the monthly site safety and quality meetings. I have also taken on duties time to time when other team members have left the job or changed teams or went on vacation on a temporary basis, until a more permanent solution was implemented

I would say I have developed multiple soft and hard transferrable skills during my time here at GSK. I was not habituated to work in an office based corporate environment. So the placement really put me out of my comfort zone. This enabled me to increase my resilience and adaptability. I also took part in many improvement projects, where I learned the basics of coding and designing dashboards. I also had access to linkedin learning which helped with my skill development.

I felt like I was not given much responsibility. The tasks that were given to me seemed quite rudimentary and seemed like all the leftover tasks from the team that no one wanted to do came to me. I was included in improvement projects but the tasks that were given to me did not feel as important as some of the other tasks. Most of the tasks seemed very administrative and repetitive. Overall I felt with the tasks I was doing, the impact was not as profound as the some of other tasks of a project.

I was supported to a certain extent during my time. I usually received support when I reached out to a team member when I was struggling with tasks or processes. It was a problem when I was doing projects that required inputs from other teams, as some of the team members are quite unresponsive or does not respond timely. I also struggled to explore other areas of the business, as most of the area leads did not have enough time for shadowing or caught up with other problems.

Overall the people were friendly and approachable. However, it depends on the team. As certain teams are quite laid back and fun to engage with and can have a conversation out of work. However, there are other teams or managers that are not so relaxed and it very task oriented. Almost everyone on the site belongs to a clique, due most of the workers being local to the area. A newcomer can struggle mightily as they might struggle to fit or feel excluded from the regular office conversations as most of the conversations are about the locality or the office in general. Also the company lacks severely in neurodiversity support and some managers are not keen to provide support for Neurodivergent individuals.

In summary, I would say I did not enjoy my placement. I did not feel very a part of the team and sometimes I felt the rules were different for me because I was an intern. Sometimes I was made to meaningless work that was not used but for the sake of doing it. The company culture did not feel very flexible. I was not allowed to explore other areas of the business that is not directly related to my role. I also was not given any freedom whatsoever. I felt like I had to ask every single thing to manager before doing something. I strongly feel that is not something that should be required if you want to build leadership skills

No

If you want to apply to GSK, make sure you thoroughly read the job description for the role you are applying to and determine the skills required to perform that role. You need to display the skills required perform the role during the interview. Also look at the company values and try to show how you have used those values in your answers. After the interview, if you are given an offer, make sure you have a short one-to-one with your prospective line manager and work through the some of the things you want to get out of the placement and how the team arrangement works. If you feel like that your manager and their team provide that for you, then accept the offer.