Apprenticeships in the pharmaceutical industry

Hi I'm Izzy Howe and I'm a HR Apprentice at UCB.

I chose to do an apprenticeship in the pharmaceutical industry as I wanted to work somewhere where I felt that I was making a difference. Although I'm not directly contributing to the research and development of treatments I feel by providing support to employees I'm helping to transform patients lives.

For me the benefit of doing an apprenticeship is being able to "earn-while-I-learn", this means I can gain high-quality on-the-job training and work experience, whilst also being paid and studying towards a qualification.

Four days of the week, I gain on-the-job work experience in the office, participating in many different projects and initiatives, the other day of the week, I spend studying towards my CIPD qualification.

In the short term, I would like to move to a more generalist role to gain more experience, and then, in the future, I would like to become an employee relations specialist.

Hi I'm Joel Balwin and I'm on the level 7 apprenticeship for statisticians at UCB.

I first became interested in going into the pharmaceutical industry in statistics when I was doing a medical statistics module in my final year at university. Though when I start to think about a career in that sphere I found out that you basically need, or is viewed as a common requirement, to have a Masters with heavy statistical content and I was in the final year of my integrated Masters which was not with heavy statistical content. So, to the opportunity to have a master's funded was a really great one and so that's why I chose to go for the apprenticeship option.

Apart from having the Master's funded, I also don't have high pressure in this learning environment. I'm expected not to know everything, which allows me to learn from others who are more experienced, and I can come in at a lower level, but it also means I can just come into the industry quicker than I could have otherwise.

For the majority of my week, I'm working at UCB and I'm working at launch statistics, so that's post-approval for kind of things to do with cost-benefit and such like.  But apart from that on Tuesday mornings I have live lectures at UCL and also on Fridays I watch pre-recorded lectures as a general pattern.

I want to successfully complete my MSc qualification but after that I'm not certain but I am considering a career in the the sphere of medical statistics.