Undergraduate, Regional Commercial Operations Review

I felt valued by my colleagues and was given real responsibility. Pfizer provided some interesting training. Once settled into my role I really enjoyed my placement year, it has provided me a real insight into future roles and had allowed me to gain relevant work experience to help me secure a position once I graduate.

I felt valued by most colleagues throughout the year. There were occasions when I would receive and email asking me to upload X to X, or do a menial job... Although this was rare.

Working across 4 departments/ functions I had a 'buddy' in each along with a manager. This meant that I had 5 colleagues who were willing to support me at any time during the year. My manager and my 'buddies' were happy to answer my questions or share some advice even if it did not relate to their department.

I Throughout the year my workload fluctuated. My manager would regularly ask me to assess my workload and reach out to him if I had too much/ too little work. Although some weeks were very busy, on the weeks that were more relaxed I was able to catch up on previous work I had to de-prioritise.

Obviously I wasn't 'running the show' although was given a number of projects to work on individually throughout the year, this work reflected my hard work. Projects in which I was part of a team also allowed me responsibility in owning parts of the project, I was able to contribute evenly to projects and often went beyond this to support colleagues that had busy schedules.

Studying Biochemistry and with and office placement, you can ask yourself how my skills will assist me. Although, upon greater inspection, I realise that although I my lab skills have not improved, my time management, prioritisation, professionalism.... (an endless amount of skills) have developed to be what an employer is looking for. Training including presentation training and Visual Sense Making will allow me to succeed in upcoming presentations in my final year.

I worked in a regional team which mean only 6 colleagues from this team worked at the same office. With travel and working from home there are generally 2/3 of my team in the office at one time. Although there was a small number of colleagues from my team in the office, there were still many others that I got along well with. I was able to get on with my work whilst still having fun.

There has been undergraduate placements at Pfizer for many years. This means that the process from getting the placement to the end has been organised and pretty seamless. Initially when receiving the placement offer there was a lack of communication that could have been better. Whilst being on placement there has been lots of training and support from colleagues across the business.

There is very little opportunity to return to Pfizer once graduated. With most positions you will not be able to return to Pfizer as the team is already full or you need more experience (as a rep for example). There are also only 5 positions available on the grad scheme, meaning for a competitive process.

There were many of us on a placement at the Walton Oaks site. This means that we were able to create great friendships throughout the year!

SURREY?!

The closest good night out would be in London, maybe Clapham area. This means that getting back to my house at night would be a costly taxi! Therefore this rarely happened as we wanted to save as much money as possible. It would have been nice to have good nightlife nearby as i think more of the placement students would have then stayed in the area on weekends rather than visiting friends or family.

I was able to train as a STEM volunteer and use my 5 volunteering days at work to get paid to deliver teaching to schools and to attend STEM events. Living near to London I would often go and explore areas, this was great to do on weekends. There were various sports teams located nearby too that people could get involved with if they wanted.