Apprentice Review

I am the manager of an apprentice in her second year of her program. I started teaching her everything in the lab and as she learns she is getting more independence designing new experiments and analysing them. I guide the projects but let her organise the lab time as she finds more helpful.

Yes, totally. I have developed and learned managerial skills, teaching and I myself became more organised too. This experience is being totally rewarding to me as I am growing a lot on my career. Regarding my apprentice, she is excelling in all aspects, from bench work, to data analysis, to troubleshooting, organising experiments and coordinating with studying, meetings and presentations.

As a manager I was first hesitant to mentor an apprentice as this could imply investing a lot of time on her training that I could not spend in my projects. However, I have realised that I get back much more than the effort spent as my apprentice helps me a lot on my experiments, which now frees my agenda to take on other projects.

It is very well organised, but I think the success is ultimately driven by my apprentice, who follows the structure and organises her activities and study time in a perfect way. She is ahead in the study part and ready to plan, discuss and analyse the future experiments we need to perform.

I don't interact much with the university of Kent, mostly for the 3-month reviews. I don't think my apprentice has many complaints either. Regarding my employer, I think AZ is doing a great job at developing brilliant students and we have the support from my line manager also to take developing opportunities for my apprentice.

I am not being qualified, and I do not think my apprentice has needed much support as she is doing very well at her studies in the University of Kent. We have three-monthly reviews which are really useful to pick up any little issue that may arise regarding studies or compliance.

Study qualifications do not affect me but of course my student. I encourage that she takes more time for studying if required when we are closer to exams period. If any, I think her qualifications are an extra bit of motivation to get better and grow faster as a scientist.

My apprentice currently lives with another apprentice within AstraZeneca. They organise social activities, talks, and also networking events. My apprentice acts as a buddy to a new apprentice in our twin lab and had herself a buddy when she started. This shows that at a personal level, now that the covid situation has ease a bit, this program is also very rewarding.

Yes

It is a great place to work, you are valued, have development opportunities, you are in contact with cutting edge technologies and great drugs to help patients. People that we work with are nice and collaborative and help you to achieve your best. Also, you can do sporadic activities in other functions to learn what other departments do.

Please, do it. It is a great program at the end of which you have 5 years of industry experience, you have a BSc degree, you can directly apply the acquired knowledge from your studies in the lab, and you become very mature scientifically at the end of this journey.