CAREER WATCH: A look at how Indian pharmaceutical organizations are lapping up young aspirants!
Meghana Mangaj, 26, from Belgaum in North Karnataka, works as a Quality Assurance Officer at a pharmaceutical company’s manufacturing site in the south of Goa. Her job is to ensure that every production batch released from manufacturing line adheres to certain quality standards.
Mangaj was straight out of her 12th grade when she was picked up by the company through a programme called ‘Learn and Earn’ in 2011. For the next three years, she worked on the shop floor on weekdays, and attended classes on the weekend. She was trained on pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical engineering, costing and inventory, regulatory affairs, computers and English. She was taught behavioral skills like communication, ethics, leadership, planning and time management.
During those three years, Mangaj received a monthly stipend from the pharma company, which also provided subsidised accommodation, transport and canteen facilities. After completion of the programme, Mangaj received a BSc degree in Industrial Drug Sciences from Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, along with a job offer from the company.
Even better, people like Mangaj, who completed the training; also had the option to pursue higher studies or go on to work with some other company. Mangaj was nervous while signing up for the programme. She had no clue about the pharma industry. She now supports her family through her earnings.
Initiatives such as these have started to play an important role in pharma industry – an industry that has been one of India’s fastest-growing but has lately started to face some challenges. Chief among them is the unemployability problem. The country churns out over 2,25,000 pharmacy and allied science graduates compared to just about 17,000 in US. But the advantage ends there.
The industry complains that most of these fresh graduates coming out of pharmacy colleges are out of sync with modern manufacturing practices.
“They have little practical training, many of them have no idea about the current good manufacturing practices (GMP) followed on the shop floor. Some of them may have learnt about aseptic manufacturing in their books, but never saw it,” says a senior executive of a pharma company.
Read more here: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/companies/job-series-part-4-how-indian-pharma-companies-are-helping-aspirants-get-jobs-4147371.html