Finance Apprentice Review

I am working in the Inter-company Profit Tracking team. Main responsibility now is looking at new materials that are going to be launched and ensuring they are fully costed along the correct trade route to allow the correct invoice to be raised in time for shipment date of the material.

Developed my data analysis skills - allowing me to compare sets of data and clearly identify issues/ things that need to be worked on. This goes in hand with developing excel use. I have the chance to work on my organizational, communication and management skills by ensuring costing runs are coordinated and set up at correct times by working closely with the team in Hyderabad.

I enjoy it a lot - i have had two different roles throughout the apprenticeship and both have been extremely different and i have learnt and developed new skills due to this. Our colleagues are extremely supportive both with work and when it comes to studying towards our L4 CIMA qualification.

Very well structured - given clear timelines of when we need to finish and monthly support review to see how well we are progressing - mainly with our CIMA qualification. However managers also have weekly catch ups to discuss workload and how we are feeling in general. The support on the studying and work front is great.

When studying towards L4 CIMA qualification the support is great, you have monthly meetings with your learning development coach from your apprenticeship provider, to monitor how you are progressing with the qualification. And your manager gives you support on the studying and work front - everyone wants you to gain the most from the program and help develop you.

We had monthly meetings with our learning development coach, and they always made it clear to email them with anything were struggling with, and in these cases 99% of the time they would get back to you the same day. They ensured we were feeling confident with our studies and also wanted to make sure we felt safe and were enjoying ourselves in the work place too.

There were only a few parts of my qualification so far that have linked in to my day to day roles throughout the past two years. However that is because there are so many roles in finance and i know people studying CIMA where it has directly linked to their role which has helped them, so i have no doubt in the future it will help me.

There is a team in place that try to organise social events for Apprentices, with covid obviously everything has had to be virtual, but they have put things such as quiz nights in for us all. And are planning on a meet up once restrictions ease. GSK also set up trips and events for apprentices to work on developing things such as resilience and communication.

Yes

My experience at GSK has been great, I have had two very different roles which have taught me new things, and have also secured a permanent role for when my apprenticeship finishes, so i can continue into the higher levels of CIMA and explore my career with GSK. They are very keen to develop young leaders.

Look into the company, ensure you know what drives the business and the key values the employees all follow. The aim is to help people show your assessor you understand the aims of GSK. As well as being fairly academic, GSK also want to see you will be a good and valued employee and team member who will follow the values and get along with colleagues.