Regulatory Operational Excellence Undergraduate Review

My placement year at Pfizer has been truly enjoyable. I have had the opportunity to work on a multitude of projects, and even lead a small team of my own. The breadth of knowledge - especially via working internationally - has been invaluable, and has really helped me to grow in confidence.

Fortunately I have been treated as a valued member of our team, by all colleagues across the globe. I was not given purely scut work, and was treated like an FTE given real responsibility and ownership of tasks and projects, reporting my progess back to Senior Team Leadership on a weekly basis.

My manager has been invaluable to me, as well as the colleagues around me. Pfizer differs from many companies in the way it views everyone as equal, regardless of your senority. If you ask senior leadership for help, they are expected to deal with that personally and provide the same level of support as you would expect from other undergraduates. Everyone is valued equally.

As the team I was in had only been in fruition for a short amount of time before I joined the company, I was pretty busy to begin with. Early starts and late finishes to ensure I kept to all the deadlines I needed to in orer to keep the project rolling as planned. About halfway through my placememnt year our team hired more employees to cope with the increasing workload, and this helped to manage time better.

I was given incredible amounts of responsibility right from the off. To say I was thrown in the deep end the least. Within my first month of work, I was on calls to people in colombia, and communicating with people much higher than myself on a regular basis to give updates on projects. At the half way mark I was given sole responsibility of a new project which would run until the end of my placemement, and I was given 2 resources to aid me with this. I had also become a SME (subject matter expert) in the processing in one of our softwares.

Honestly I would recommend working for Pfizer in a heartbeat. The international company knows how to push you to get the best out of you, and is also understanding if you need to take the pressure off a bit. Having 1 year work experience has not only heightened my CV immensley, it has given me a taste of what the 'adult world' is really like and I am planning to keep up the routine of working 8.30-5.30 for my final year at university.

The office has a very relaxed vibe, where there is banter flowing but also a good work ethic. As my Pfizer office operated a 'Hot Desk' policy, it meant if you needed to it with a different team, or a SME away from where you normally sat you could just pickup your laptop and move elsewhere. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming, and the site head would always smile andsay good morning.

Overall the work placement wsa very well organised. For the first few months myself adn the other undergraduates in the same department as I had regular meetings about different parts of the business, where we learned how we all fit together and gave us a better understanding of the business.

The amount of options to develop yourself and your skills was unbelivable. Pfizer run several courses worldwide which involve practial training days as well as online self taught training. Most of these you can opt to qualify for certification if you take a test at the end. As well as regular LunchnLearns and guest speakers (at one point we had Dame Kelly Holmes!) Pfizer really do care about their employees.

Pfizer has been an amazing complany to work for, and are very flexible with future employment opportunities. For example, if the location of your current office is too far from your family for a full time job, they are happy to accomodate and move you to one of the office branches closer to you family home.

Yes! Amongst some colleagues especially - they have helped us out with where are the best plaes to go and taken us on a bar crawl around town. Living an 'office job' routine, you want to take every second that your away from the office in evenings or on weekends and make the most of it.

Despite living in the south east for this year, prices were not as high as I expected them to be. The thing is, most university towns/cities are normally geared towards students and have deals on to attract them.. so the reality is that if you move somehwere that maybe doesn't have a university near by prices will always increase.

The nightlife could have been better. Again, as it's not a university town/city there's not the plethora of choice you often get. Still, you can always make the best of a situaiton so to speak and often it's more about who you are with rather than where you are going.

There were sports teams, and billiards teams, outside of work. Pfizer also generously give each employee 5 days volunteering to use every year - seperate from Annual Leave days. This helps you impact the area you're living in with a feel good factor. Aside from that if you looked for opportunities yourself, there were some around.