Manufacturing Scientist Review

I work in the R&D pilot plant, manufacturing drug products, for use in clinical trials and for the development of products to scale up to large scale manufacture. Day to day this involves setting up of equipment, use of that equipment and completion of safety documents. Typical processes include granulation, tablet compression and tablet coating. I've been involved in projects planning department meetings, department development days and assisting in changes to ways of working.

My practical skills have improved since I've started since I started my apprenticeship, through training on different bits of equipment and processes. My confidence in talking to different people and organising meetings with senior staff has increased hugely. I am now much more capable of talking in front of a crowd and getting myself heard in large meetings.

I enjoy coming to work in the morning. I enjoy what I do, being hands on as well as being sat at a desk. The team I have joined is a very friendly and welcoming group of people and this has helped my transition from school into work. Getting on with the people I work with, makes work I already enjoy, that bit more enjoyable.

I would say the programme is organised in terms of the short term. I know the programme almost definitely has a long term structure, but I wouldn't know what this is. I think an improvement could be a bit more awareness of the long term structure of my programme.

GSK's been helpful. As the degree associated with my apprenticeship isn't directly relevant to my job role, my manager and other members of the department have been proactive in suggesting and organising opportunities for me to link my degree learning to real world examples. The early talent team have been helpful in keeping us updated with development events.

We do all the study for our degree online except for one week a year which we spend at university. Our course tutor is quick to respond if we have any queries on the course material. The online content is fairly good, however it still contains glaring spelling and grammar errors which has been raised to them in the past. There also isn't a huge amount of practice questions on the material available.

As mentioned above the qualification isn't directly linked to the job role. A knowledge of the background chemistry is helpful as our formulations obviously depend on chemical science. Therefore it does aid some of our understanding of the materials we are using in processes, but not of the processes themselves.

Through work I am a STEM ambassador, so I've been able to network with more experienced people in the STEM field. There is a social club on site, which I'm a member of, and this has a large selection sports teams and clubs. Through NxtGen, the group run by apprentices that represents apprentices, regular social events are organised.

Yes

I've felt pretty happy here so far. The mission GSK works towards gives you a fair amount of job satisfaction and the company is very good at treating apprentices as regular employees in terms of reward packages (benefits etc) and work load. The people that work here are generally friendly.

Probably the same as if they were applying to anywhere else. Research the company, make a good impression, maker sure they're who you want to work for and it's what you want to be doing. Specifically for GSK I'd say don't be intimidated by the large size of the company. It is a big company but it also feels very personal.