Sarah Hunt's GSK placement

Sarah Hunt is studying for the 4 year BSc Management with Human Resources (Year in Business) at Royal Holloway. She started her placement year with GSK in Brentford at the end of June. We asked her a number of questions about the application process and how she has found her placement so far...

How did you find the application process?

A long process but one that is worth it in the end, it took a lot of rejections but those rejections helped me and made my applications stronger in the future. I found the most important thing to remember is to not give up if you get rejected from one or two companies (which I saw people do) it’s a learning curve and one that will help me a lot when I apply for graduate jobs.

Would you have done anything differently in my first 2 years at Royal Holloway?

I would have been less naive when applying for my first handful of jobs, I wasted applications by not realising how important my input was in the applications.

What recommendations would you make to those Year in Business students starting in their 1^st year at Royal Holloway and their 2^nd year?

1) Your first year grades count!

2) Its not an easy process and it needs a lot of preparation in advance, start applying in September not February!

What is your job title ?

Talent Acquisition Associate

How have your first few months been on my placement?

Great! I feel like a real part of the team and have learnt so much, I'm not treated like an intern I am given real responsibilities and people rely on my work a lot.

What has been the best thing so far about your placement?

Taking part in searches, working for the executive recruitment team we are sometimes given very specific roles to fill for high talent roles. This means advertising on the website is not sufficient, therefore I have to help find and approach people on LinkedIn to attract them to work at GSK, this saves GSK thousands of pounds because if this was not done they would have to go to a search firm which on average costs around £30,000.