Datatrial’s Summer Intern- Reflections on my time at Datatrial
Last year Datatrial had the pleasure of welcoming Joe into our business development team as a summer intern. Joe was entering his final year of university that September and was seeking some industry experience for life after university. Here is Joe’s reflection on his time at Datatrial and how this has helped him.
Upon starting my role at Datatrial as a Business Development Associate, myself and the company were ever aware of my impending return to university. With that in mind, a plan was set out to optimise my short 3 ½ months there in order to help me gain as much experience as possible. In this time, it was very much about mutual gain and not just how could I help the company but, how could the company help me. The initial tasks helped ease me into what business development is and provided a base of knowledge that I could build off while freeing the other members of the BD team to handle more complicated tasks. Following my acclimatisation to business development, Datatrial thankfully never allowed any stagnancy and proceeded to keep developing me as an associate, with the obvious bonus of helping the company achieve their checkpoints for sustaining business.
After returning to university, I found myself with a more professional mindset and a clearer picture of where I wanted to be, regarding my role in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry. The 3 ½ months I spent at Datatrial were invaluable. Which is why, when offered to continue my work remotely from Manchester, aiding in the companies outreach and lead generation amongst other things, I couldn’t have been happier. The understanding and flexibility of the other staff I worked with, knowing ultimately, I was still a full-time student in my final year, helped significantly reduce the pressure of the job as well. The 7 months in the remote role offered an escape from academia into business development and even from afar, helped grow my skills in BD.
The whole experience of working at Datatrial helped me better plan my steps after my degree by providing an inside perspective of the biotech industry they operate in and around. The understanding of where I wanted to be career wise allowed more directed actions this past year and motivated me. In my final year I had to take a Science & Industry module, which specifically looks at the business side of the biotech/pharmaceutical industry and without any doubt, I put my success in this module down to the knowledge I gained in my role as a BD Associate. As well as the knowledge gained, softer skills were developed also, such as my organisation and time management which transferred into all my modules and deadlines. There are many things that I have taken away from my time at Datatrial and I definitely owe some of my academic success to them.
