Laboratory Scientist Apprentice Review

On a day-to-day basis, I spend around half my time in the lab carrying out experiments and the other half of the time in the office writing up work or in meetings. I am given responsibility over the management and planning of my work and have to think about the best way to carry out my work.

I have learned many practical lab skills in terms of carrying out experiments and how best to complete work in the lab. I have also developed many personal skills like organisation and time management and professional skills like presentation and communication skills. There is a huge effort for you to drive your own development and you can really tailor your goals to what you want to learn.

I really enjoy the work I do and feel I get to make a real difference to projects and the wider department. There is a good drive for AZ being a great place to work which is evident through the groups and opportunities that you can get involved with to share passions with other colleagues.

My programme is structured really well, I have a designated day to complete my university work and the other four days to complete my AZ work. The uni work is also structured well into units and there are 3 clear sections to the year. For the degree however, we do work all year round and there are no long breaks like with normal uni so it can be a challenge to plan in holiday around this.

There is a huge amount of support available and continued efforts to improve this. My manager has helped me massively and the community of apprentices is great to share similar struggles. There is regular discussion about wellbeing which encourages more open discussion between team members and a focus on inclusion and diversity which I think is really beneficial to apprentices, ensuring we are heard and included.

There is fairly little support from uni due to it being a distance learning course. This is definitely something I've found challenging as there is not a lot of live interaction with our tutors. They do answer questions over email which is good if you have specific questions and are very often willing to set up meetings to go through feedback etc. when requested.

There are definitely sections of the theory from the degree that are fundamental to my job role and really help me understand what I'm doing at work. There are also modules for business aspects which do help explore the business we work in and help us understand our role in the company.

We have a variety of Employee Resource Groups at AZ that cover many different interests e.g. AZ Pride, AZ Inspire etc. These are really good to get involved in and attend events hosted by these groups. We also have a culture team that do various events throughout the year like quizzes.

Yes

AZ has a great culture and an emphasis on you developing in areas you are interested in to gain new skills and experiences. There is a lot of support throughout the apprenticeship in order to make you a well-rounded scientist I would definitely recommend the AZ apprenticeship programme as a great alternative to the traditional uni route.

I would say the most important thing to show is how passionate you are about science and come up with some good examples to demonstrate this. Also having some work experience and showing what your learned from it is always a great thing to have. Preparing a wide variety of examples that you can use at interview is also hugely beneficial.