Saltire Programme leads to student’s ten-week placement with American company
A final year GCU student has secured a summer internship through a charity and hopes it will act as the catalyst for a successful future career.
International Business and Human Resource (HR) Management student Stacey Campbell, decided to get involved in Entrepreneurial Scotland’s Saltire Scholar Programme during 2019 and is now set to complete a ten-week placement with American pharmaceutical and research company, Arranta Bio.
Stacey explained what inspired her to apply for the programme. She said: “During my third year, two girls came into one of my lectures and spoke about their experience through Saltire – it completely sold it to me and I knew I had to get involved!
I’d then finally got through to the shortlist stage last year but everything got cancelled due to coronavirus, which was obviously really disappointing. This year, they sent out an email offering us the chance to put ourselves forward for it again.”
Stacey added: “Initially you apply for the Saltire Programme and once you get through they start releasing job lists and each list has around 30 jobs on them. There’s a new one out every few weeks and you’re able to apply for whatever you want. It’s really varied as well, and not just for business students.
I think it’s a really interesting programme because you’re getting the chance to build a network in the field you’re wanting to work in. There are so many different jobs and they do a lot of training as well. You also get the opportunity to do some blogging while you’re actually on the job, which was another aspect that appealed to me.”
After the disappointment of 2020, Stacey was delighted to get her opportunity this time around and is excited to work with a company that relates to her on a personal level.
She explained: “I was absolutely buzzing. It’s in the field of HR that I want to work in and hopefully it’ll be the first step towards that.
The main project of the role is to create an employee engagement survey. I then need to issue it, collate the results and finally create a report - providing recommendations for moving the business forward.”
Stacey added: “Arranta Bio manufacture products to use in pharmaceutical research. They’re doing a lot of projects with Parkinson’s disease and other degenerative conditions. That was one of the main things that actually appealed to me because my previous career was in pharmacy and healthcare and I wanted to experience that environment again.
I worked in pharmacy and management for about 12 years. I had got to the point where I felt like I wasn’t having any kind of impact on my team. I was managing a bunch of people as a line manager but I didn’t feel that I could actually change policies and procedures – which really got me thinking about HR as a career.”
In order to kick-start that career, Stacey recognises the importance of securing her internship and hopes it will help her stand out from the crowd in future.
She said: “It’s absolutely crucial for me getting experience at this stage. I’ve only had one job that relates to HR, so I needed to do something else that was going to boost my CV. I’d applied for a lot of different roles during my time at College and now University but I just didn’t get an opportunity - which was quite disheartening. When the pandemic hit trying to find a job became even more challenging, so it just felt good to finally secure something!”
Stacey added: “Another reason I went for the Saltire Programme was because my programme at GCU is an internationally accredited degree – I knew I needed to boost it with more relevant experience.
I was gutted not to get the chance to travel to America with this internship but I’m hoping I’ll now get the opportunity to work abroad in future.”
By Ross Clark
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