Product Development Apprentice Review

I do release and stability testing. This is an analytical role that looks at both drug product (such as tablets) and API (active pharmaceutical ingredient), meaning that I spend about 50% of my time working in the lab and the other 50% in the office, writing up and doing other small jobs.

I've learnt a lot of new skills, especially key analytical skills. I've also developed skills in areas such as public speaking and statistical tools such as Minitab and Excel since they are relevant to my area of work. There are many opportunities for training in specific skill areas.

I really enjoy my job and the people involved in it. Apprentices don't get treated differently to the rest of the team and the first year is really well comparable to an industrial placement year. My team are really friendly and there's a good atmosphere, making it easy to ask questions.

My programme is generally really well organised as it's been around for a few years now. The induction program works well, since it's integrated with the one used for most September new starters, such as the students on their IP year and allows you to get to know other new starters.

I get really good support from AZ, especially regarding uni work. I rarely have any problems getting my 20% uni time and can ask for more support if needed. I was well accepted into the team as they had previously had an apprentice and it made it easy to transition into working in that environment.

In general MMU are quite good at supporting you though the course, and the support from the tutors specifically helping us towards our end point assessment has been great this year. The only problem I've found is that since we don't get to see the tutors much, email isn't always the most effective method of communication and things can often get missed when emailing, and it's easy for them to miss an email and you won't receive a response,

A lot of the course is well suited to my role and helped me to better understand the relevance of things like health and safety in my job. The one aspect my course is missing is that there isn't a large amount of chemistry involved, this seems to have been rectified on the new 4 year course though.

There's a fair amount of extra-curricular activities through employee resource groups, which often organise social event and learning opportunities. There's also the opportunity to use a volunteering day once a year to help to support the local community which is a great team building activity and I'd recommend taking advantage of it.

Yes

I've had a really great apprenticeship experience here, and I would definitely recommend it. I'd initially been sceptical about working full time instead of going to uni but the experiences I've had here instead have more than made up for the experience I felt I would have been missing out on.

Understanding the values of the company is really important and it's key to understand how they apply to you and what you want to do. Being able to relate your experiences to what is important to the company is going to be something that's assessed in your application and on the assessment day.