Project Controls Review

I am employed as a Project Management Apprentice. In my role I am based in a portfolio management office and provide support to programme managers to ensure the projects on site are being given the best chance to run on time and to budget whilst bringing the project benefits to site.

I am undertaking an external qualification with a training provider called PDS. This 2 year training course has developed my project managements knowledge and general skills base and will ultimately give me an APM accredited project management qualification. At GSK I have developed my computer skills immensely, and am now comfortable using many different software packages.

I have found the team I am based in, as well as the general culture of GSK to be very supportive, with people generally quite willing to take their time to pass on knowledge. This has helped me to quickly settle in to the programme.

My manager has regular fortnightly catch ups with me which has helped to quickly build a relationship where I feel valued. Furthermore, I have found that if I do perform well people do take a moment to recognise this.

The Apprentice programme at GSK has been running for a number of years so the structure behind is generally solid. I have found the first few weeks to be a bit less organised as the apprentice gets up to speed/ your colleagues appreciate the skills you bring. During this time I was less confident in the organisation of the programme but as I have become more familiar this has changed. As my particular apprenticeship type was new to the company there have been occasions where certain aspects of the programme have not occurred in the way that was originally intended.

I have a monthly phone call with my contact from the training provider to check up on my progress and how I feel the programme is going. Alongside this I have a longer face to face meeting every other month. I believe if I needed more support they would happily react to that and support me to the level required.

Upon joining GSK I was given a work mentor, a career mentor and an apprentice 'buddy'. The support given to me by these people, as well as my manager has been high, and I feel if I were to need more support it would not be an issue.

Whilst I am earning less than when I started my apprenticeship, I feel the pay is competitive for an apprenticeship in general. Having moved to the area for the role the high rental prices in the area are somewhat prohibitive and would need to be considered if you were looking to rent.

The company has various social sections that are available to join that welcome new members of any skill level. These tend to cost far less than if you were to do the activity outside of work and provide good opportunities to mix with colleagues socially.

Yes

Having worked in a few different sectors over the past 5 years I would be happy to recommend GSK as a place to work as I feel it compares favourably to other companies-particularly when comparing against similarly sized companies.

I would suggest taking time on the written application to ensure you are giving yourself the best chance to get through to the next stages of the application process.