Business and Supply Chain Apprentice Review

Throughout my 4 year scheme, I will spend a year in each area of logistics and then a final year in one of the three areas. I'm currently in the warehouse and will then move onto planning and then launch and data, giving me a broad overview of logistics.

I've developed on many of my skills, with the main one being my confidence in speaking to people, asking questions, presenting, and more. I really struggled with this initially, but the support from my manager and mentors has helped me to continually progress. I've also learnt many new skills that are unique to the business environment, such as the systems and procedures we use.

I'm really enjoying the programme. The day to day work is always different and interesting and there is always something for me to do. I get the opportunity to speak to and meet new people everyday and develop myself. I find the university work difficult as it's a fairly new topic to me (I've normally done maths and science so business and logistics is quite different), but having 20% of my time to focus on it, and the support of my tutors, other apprentices and my manager is really helping. When I first started I was worried about my social life, and that I was going to be looking at my friends at uni and be jealous of them, but the apprentices are always organising events and nights out so I'm not missing out at all.

The programme is well structured and I've been given a good amount of time to get settled in. However it's not too structured that it can't be moulded to adapt to business changes and suit individuals. For example, I've started my scheme at the same time as one of my friends, and we have quite different day to day lives as we're quite different people. I really like this because it allows me to develop in a way that works for me.

I receive a lot of support, I have two check ins a month to make sure that I'm happy with what I'm doing and to see if there's anymore that can be done. We also do 'mood scores' daily so if you need some support you can ask for it when you need, but you don't need to wait to give these scores, my manager and co workers are always on hand to help me when I need it.

I receive a lot of support here as well. We have regular group calls with our tutors and if we don't understand something or need further clarity we can organise a one to one call with the tutor whenever we like. They will also mark interim work for us before our actual assignments and give us feedback for how we can improve.

At the minute it's still quite early days but I think once I've done more uni work then it will start to relate more to my day to day work. At the minute it doesn't fully align because I haven't done enough of either, but apprentices from the years before me have said it will eventually because it has for them.

There's regularly apprentice events organised which are always really good. There's also ERG's which are Employee Resource Groups which are groups you can join to meet new people and learn new things. I'm part of a few of these and have already been on several development days that they've organised. People around the site do also set up sports teams and leagues which are fun to get involved in.

Yes

I would definitely recommend GSK to a friend because every one is so friendly here and want to help you be the best you can be. Not only this but the apprentice schemes have a really good balance of all of the key factors that you would want (work, development, structure, learning, social etc.).

It sounds cliché but I would say to be yourself and be confident in it, they genuinely want to hire a range of different people who can bring different ideas and factors to the table. Also, make sure you're prepared and do the application as early as you can, especially if you're coming straight from a levels because you don't want add to your stress levels by not giving yourself enough time to apply!