‘A year in the life of a med comms graduate trainee – from grad scheme to running your own projects’
9 November 2023
By Flora Clemett
Starting your career and transitioning from education is a daunting prospect. At Wave, we have designed an efficient onboarding scheme to support your ascent into working life. From developing understanding of our core disease areas to acquiring new practical and technical skills during the induction process, Wave’s graduate trainees can make a difference quickly. We place a strong emphasis on collaboration and, even as a junior team member, you are valued, and your ideas welcomed.
Exploring all three of the career paths at Wave, which include writing, editorial and client services, you have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the industry and garner a complete sense of what managing a project entails. By choosing the client services path, junior team members can have a quick and meaningful impact by supporting the senior team in project management, research, liaising with healthcare professionals and coordinating the development of content by the editorial and writing teams.
We caught up with three of the client services team who joined Wave as graduates to hear what it’s been like starting their careers in medical communications.
What about your role do you find most interesting?
Every day is different, but I think the most interesting part of my role is seeing a project go from a client briefing call all the way to seeing the final product. I also work closely with the client to ensure everything is tracking correctly, whilst assisting in managing the team to deliver projects in an efficient manner. – Puneet
As an account executive, the most interesting part of my role is the continuous learning involved. I work on several projects simultaneously, all of which cover different therapy areas and allow me to meet and learn from several different world-leading specialists. Even a year into my career, this is something that continues to be as exciting as when I first started! – Elena
What project(s) are you most proud of?
I am most proud of my work on our medical education haematology account, where I have successfully helped to organise multiple events to educate healthcare professionals on the newest research into the treatment of many haematological diseases. Being onsite and seeing the enjoyment and the intrigue of the nurses, doctors and pharmacists for the research that is being presented to them, and the questions and discussions that ensue, makes it all worthwhile. – Flora
I think the first event I led independently was really eye-opening and memorable – it’s so rewarding to see all our efforts as a team have a good payoff, so I was definitely most proud of that. – Puneet
What kind of projects do you work on?
The benefit of working as an account executive across multiple accounts is that it has allowed me to be involved in a variety of projects – from symposia and congresses to medical education programmes. I think the most unique project I’ve worked on has involved the development of a practical tool for healthcare professionals. This tool has the potential to really impact the day-to-day of disease monitoring, and it’s been really interesting to work on. – Puneet
Any form of face-to-face meetings/events are my favourite type of projects to work on because it is lovely to see everything come together and get instant feedback from attendees. – Elena
How has Wave helped facilitate your move from education to employment?
From the start, Wave has been really patient and understanding that this is my first full-time role post-education. All teams I have worked with have always taken the time to teach me how to do things, without assuming I would know straight away, as well as checking in with how comfortable I was to do each task set. This open communication has created an environment in which I am always comfortable to ask for help and as a result, I have learned how to complete my work to a high standard much faster. Also, the team has put together some really helpful training sessions/tasks and provided detailed feedback, which has been fundamental to my development. – Elena
The grad scheme really helped me get an insight into all aspects of med comms and the team has definitely helped me become more comfortable in the day-to-day account executive tasks, such as client contact and team management. By shadowing more senior members of the team, I’ve been able to explore the med comms industry and tasks involved, alongside learning more about business development. – Puneet
Please give a final comment on how you feel your role matters in med comms and the wider industry.
Despite not having regular direct contact with patients, the potential life-changing impact that the medicines we work with could have, is something that I never forget. Being part of a wider effort to improve patient outcomes feels very rewarding and is very motivating during difficult projects or extremely busy periods. – Elena
I know that my work matters as my organisation and proactivity when coordinating meetings lead to the creation of successful meetings that allow HCPs to learn new therapeutics, which they can apply directly to improve the lives of their patients. – Flora
As our recent graduates have explained, the work we do at Wave is rewarding. Our account executives play a direct role in delivering programmes for healthcare professionals, which ultimately translate to improved patient outcomes, globally. Whether we are sharing information about new, transformative drugs with medical experts or fostering peer-to-peer learning via educational meetings, our work is based on clinically relevant thinking and robust scientific content and is delivered via innovative and inspiring communication programmes and channels.
Look out for our next graduate assessment scheme beginning in January 2024.