Jane Tran

Country of origin: Vietnam

Placement: GSK

I decided to take a placement year as I was aware of the advantage of gaining first-hand experience in the real business world before graduating. Employers tend to be in favour of candidates who had some working experience- especially those were engaging in a full time role. It was indeed one of the wisest decisions I have made so far, the placement year offered me an eye opening opportunity to learn about the business as well as boost my employability by polishing my skills to be fully prepared for a graduate job.

My role involved a lot of projects with multi-functional and regional teams to support Supply and Procurement initiatives/projects to improve business performance and drive down costs. In addition I worked on data analysis & reporting in a number of Supply Chain systems to develop proposals for improvement and roll out strategic business initiatives.

I was very fortunate to be in a team who looks after the business from a global perspective so there were a lot of opportunities to expose to various people from all teams around the world. I really enjoyed meeting and working with people from different background across the business. My year with GSK was also full of exciting activities organised by IP Unite group throughout the year to support and connect all IPs in UK, it was all about sharing, learning and having fun!

During my time at GSK, I was lucky enough to have not only my line manager to take care of my growth but also other senior managers and directors. One of the highlights is the series of development sessions I had with a senior director to discuss on what I could do to achieve my personal objective for the whole placement year as well as for each month. She provided a huge amount of support to me with providing contact details of key people to meet and learn more about other areas within GSK and offering sponsorship for my quarterly business trips to visit GSK manufacturing sites and third party supplier sites. I also got opportunities to be mentored by a VP and a manager who are very experienced in mentoring and helping new starters in the organisation. They gave me a lot of precious advice and recommendation to perform the best in every task I was given and answer any questions or help to resolve any matter that I raised. It was truly a pleasure being supported by so many great people throughout my year at GSK.

I look forward to working in an Operations or Finance role which demands a strong numerical and analytical skills, as well as an excellent attention to detail and problem solving skill. My Placement as a Business Analyst has enabled me to enhance all the vital skills to successfully carry out responsibilities such as improving working capital, sorting out missing statistics, converting data, analysing reports and resolving clients’ IT queries.