Gordon Johnson
Pre-Registration Trainee
I first started working in Tesco round about eight years ago in the pharmacy and then I did vacation placement as well before deciding to do do my pre-reg in Tesco. The pre-reg programme's lived up to my expectations because it seems that it is better than what I was expecting - I wasn't expecting it to be as fun as it is, every day is a different day, getting to learn something new every day which is great and also getting to interact with people and customers everyday as well.
My favourite aspect of the job is that every day is a different day. One day I might be doing blood pressure monitoring on patients and one day I might be dispensing medicine. One day I might be out on the counter, looking at the symptoms and trying to recommend products to help them.
The support structure in Tesco for pre-reg is very good, I have my own tutor in store and I get to see her for an hour every week - on top of the training time that I get. I also have a mentor in store as well and he was actually a pre-reg student at Tesco in the past. so it's very helpful that way to have someone like that in store to help you.
The shift patterns that you can work in Tesco would probably depend on the store that you work in. Like the store that I work in is a 24-hour store, so the pharmacy is open a great number of hours during the day. So you might get like an early shift one day and a late shift another day and there is a lot of flexibility to be able to go and change what shift you want to do.
I see my future after pre-reg actually staying in Tesco, I'd like to one day become a Pharmacy Manager and actually run a pharmacy team. I also have aspirations to become a tutor myself with pre-reg's that are coming through in the future and I think with the training and support that already exists means that we can only get better and build on what we have already.
