Industrial Trainee Review

Due to my placement being very varied week by week, there were aspects I enjoyed and aspects that I did not enjoy - similar to most job roles. Overall I found it a positive experience and would definitely recommend it to other students looking for a placement.

Again, this varied very much depending on the colleague. In general, I felt valued by most of the team, most of the time.

From the first day, we were always encouraged to ask for help when we needed it, and there are always colleagues available when needed. However, most of the time I was not working directly with my manager and found support from other colleagues instead.

I found that this varied a lot throughout the year - some weeks I didn't have much to do and some weeks I was staying late to keep up with the workload. If I ever got bored, my manager was always there or I could drop an email to the team and ask if they needed any help. I think this was a really good balance as it kept things interesting but not too stressful.

The amount of responsibility increased steadily over the year. I started off with highly supervised admin tasks for the first half of the placement, moving onto preparing submissions with little supervision in the second half of the year. I think this was a good balance, however some students had more responsibility than others and not everyone got given the same opportunity.

What I have learnt this year was not science based, therefore is unlikely to help me during my final year of university. However, the other skills I have learnt such as timekeeping and organisation skills will be incredibly useful and have given me the motivation to work hard. I have had the opportunity to experience many different areas of the pharmaceutical industry by meeting others in different departments and learning from them, and this has given me a much better idea of what I want to do in the future.

The atmosphere was generally quite friendly, and was what I assume is a typical working office environment.

I think the application and interview process was very well organised, however the onboarding process was not very simple and there was no 'plan' for the year - we were just left to get on with our work and it was therefore difficult to see our progress. I understand that creating goals or a development plan may be our own responsibility but it would have been useful to have more guidance.

Industrial trainees in other departments took on a huge number of opportunities to travel overseas, attend training sessions and conferences and a lot of money was invested in them. I was discouraged from taking part in development opportunities due to lack of budget in my department and I had to pay my own expenses if I took an opportunity - which was definitely not the case in other departments and is not what you would expect working for a company like Pfizer.

In my department, there are no graduates and only one colleague within 5 years of finishing university. Some other departments take on graduates although this has not really been discussed or encouraged. Recently, a graduate scheme has been added although this is only in the marketing department and therefore is not appealing to many graduates.

The social scene was good but you had to organise it yourself as nothing was arranged by the company. It would have been nice for some more things to be arranged at the start of the year!

The cost of living and socialising was very varied depending on where you choose to live and there was a very wide range of living arrangements in the area (e.g. shared house outside London - cheap. Studio flat commuting from London - expensive)

Not much in the area but it is close enough to London to go out there.

The gym on site was excellent and had many opportunities but that was the only option outside of work