Kieran’s placement leads to exciting HR role at Vertex

During the first year of my Business and Management degree I became increasingly interested in a career as a Human Resource Manager. The HR specialists at UoG are excellent and are used to training experienced HR managers to gain CIPD qualifications. If you take the HR specialist route you will get to study with them and gain associative membership of CIPD.

My industry placement year was with Vertex, an American Biopharmaceutical business, which develops and commercialises medicines that address the root causes of disease for people with serious and life-threatening illnesses. Being an innovative organisation means that Vertex is constantly undergoing changes, from drug discovery projects to organisational re-structuring. My role as a paid intern involved shadowing initially, and then supporting, the North Europe and Australia HR Vice President.  Just some of his roles included personnel recruitment, inductions and orientations, talent development training and performance appraisals. One project that I worked on was a Diversity and Inclusion project that explored ways of engaging and managing introverts and extroverts in meetings!

Having now finished my degree, I have returned to Vertex as an Employer Service Associate.  I am currently working on the development of their HR Portal, international contracts and testing and training for new systems.