Graduate Careers at GlaxoSmithKline

Due to its great breadth of history and experience in pharmaceuticals, landing a graduate placement at GlaxoSmithKline is understandably tough. The company offers few places: six sales and marketing, six finance, four procurement and purchasing, and three for the three-year IT trainee scheme. You’ll need a minimum 2:1 to stand a chance of getting the nod to join one of these market leading teams. The programmes usually take between two and three years to complete, and will leave those who make an impression in pole position to land a role in either manufacturing, research and development, information technology, sales and marketing, or communications.

More esoteric schemes are available, including ones in engineering, technical development, statistics, manufacturing, and regulatory affairs; these all require more specific scientific degrees and once again last between two and three years.

However, you don’t necessarily need to complete a trainee scheme to land a position at GSK – although it certainly won’t hurt; those with the right balance of experience and qualifications can apply directly to the company. For those armed with an MBA, the company’s international programme, GSK International Esprit, provides a potential route to the top. Aside from an MBA, any hopeful applicant will need a strong commercial, pharmaceutical, biotech or consulting background, and be both free and willing to globetrot as, when and to where they’re needed.

GlaxoSmithKline Graduate Recruitment Info

Tel: +44 (0) 0208 047 4777

GlaxoSmithKline Profile & Stats

Global brands such as Aquafresh, Beechams and Ribena sit amongst GlaxoSmithKline’s long line of products: definitive proof that this pharmaceutical has come a long way since its original incarnation as a London pharmacy in 1715. Employing more 100,000 people across 100+ countries, GlaxoSmithKline describes itself as a research-based pharmaceutical company, meaning it places just as much emphasis on science as it does on sales.

GlaxoSmithKline only found its current form in 2001, as a result of the merger between Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. However, both of these drug giants were themselves the results of amalgamations and alliances, taking GSK’s ancestry back much further than its most recent re-designation.

After opening its doors as a pharmacy in the City during the early 18th century, the next salient moment in GSK’s pronged history came in 1830, when John K Smith opened his first drugstore in Philadelphia. John's younger brother, George, joined him in 1841, to form John K Smith & Co, before Mahlon Kline bolstered the ranks in 1865, with the company being renamed as Smith, Kline and Co just ten years later.

Along another fork of GSK’s historical tracks, Thomas Beecham launched Beecham's Pills in England in 1842, selling a laxative which became a quick-fire success. By 1859, the eponymous owner had opened the world’s first purpose built medicine factory in St Helens. Soon after in 1873, Joseph Nathan – who left the UK to seek new business opportunities 20 years prior – established a general trading company at Wellington in New Zealand, Joseph Nathan and Co. This was the foundation upon which the Glaxo company was later formed. In 1880, Burroughs Wellcome & Company was established in London by American pharmacists Henry Wellcome and Silas Burroughs, four years after Joseph Nathan had opened a London office.

Despite two World Wars, all four companies flourished, and in the second half of the 20th century, the mergers that eventually brought together these different entities began. In 1989, SmithKline Beckman – as it was then known – and The Beecham Group joined forces to create SmithKline Beecham plc. And it wasn’t long until the other drug bellwethers caught the consolidation bug. Glaxo and Wellcome merged in 1995, forming Glaxo Wellcome, before coming together with SmithKline Beecham six years later to create the GSK of today.

GlaxoSmithKline’s product ranges are split into pharmaceutical and health care. The former is subdivided into eight areas – respiratory, anti-virals, central nervous system, anti-bacterials/anti-malarials, metabolic, vaccines, oncology and emesis, cardiovascular and urogenital – with the later broken into over-the-counter medicines, oral care and nutritional healthcare.

More than just money makers, GSK is quick to emphasise its commitment to more altruistic practices. With research and development sites in the UK, the US, France, Spain, Italy, Croatia and Japan, the company is dedicated to tackling three of the world’s most devastating diseases: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria – scourges of the developing world.