Pros
Getting entry level job experience, especially in customer service and clinical trial tool usage
Kontras
I would only recommend this job to gain the initial entry level experience needed in order to proceed with an actual career in the pharmaceutical industry, if there is no real other option. Projects are sold to clients with unreasonable budgeting which 95% of time ends up with employees being overworked to reach deliverables. Instead of being compensated for this, management accuses employees for poor time management and ineffective work. The work itself is as creative as a call center, demands minimal intellectual capacity and constant stress . Site Management Associates (SMAs) with very little training are thrown on the job without any actual guidance as the only actual point of contact for clinical sites. There is a constant fight between functional and study Management with regard to budgeting and SMAs are always cought in the middle of it. Annual goals are set highly based on analytics which makes it very easy to stay good in numbers while doing a poor and incompliant job, therefore good quality work is not rewarded. It is very common to get management complaints when inconsistencies, incompliances or problems with regard to studies are documented, as this requires additional investigation and exceeds budgeted time. There is a very high employee turnover and instead of addressing the underlying issues, management puts the blame on "ungrateful" young people who have unrealistic expectations. Thankfully the job market has better options and sooner or later people understand it and leave. The acquisition by ICON has not changed the work conditions.