A young blonde woman in white top looks pensively just to the right of the camera.
Edel Linehan. Image: Luke Maxwell

How do you maintain a sense of community as a graduate?

7 Feb 2019

During your studies, you may be automatically inducted into a group of like-minded people. Yet how do you maintain that same sense of community once you enter the working world?

There is a reason that college years are the subject of intense nostalgia. There’s a lot to be nostalgic about, much of which centres around the sense of community inherent to the third-level experience.

College is unique in that it often inducts you into a group of like-minded people and provides ample opportunity to spend time with them. It’s arguably one of the easiest places to forge strong friendships, so when you leave college the absence of that network can be isolating and difficult to deal with.

Is there a way to preserve that sense of community once you become a graduate and take your first hesitant steps into the working world, however? If you’re Edel Linehan, an integrated product team (IPT) engineer at MSD Ballydine, the answer is yes.

In her capacity as an IPT engineer, Linehan provides technical support for operations at Ballydine. “That can vary from providing documentation to performing RCAs [root cause analyses] on certain issues … no two days are quite the same.”

Speaking to Siliconrepublic.com, Linehan explained that she was immediately drawn to the company in the early interview stages because it struck her as “lively and friendly place to work”. She highlighted specifically how warm a community it provides after you leave third-level education, an ideal environment to host what can be a rocky and challenging transition from the world of education into the world of work.

The atmosphere is certainly not the only thing Linehan enjoys about working at MSD, however; she also appreciates the flexibility of the graduate programme.

Linehan explained that she had considerable influence over what kind of rotations she did and what kind of roles she had, allowing her to mould the programme to be more in line with her individual career goals.

“It provides a great basis and great training wherever you want to go, within the pharmaceutical industry or outside it.”

To hear more from Linehan about her experience with both the graduate programme and working life at MSD Ballydine, check out her interview above in full.

Eva Short
By Eva Short

Eva Short was a journalist at Silicon Republic, specialising in the areas of tech, data privacy, business, cybersecurity, AI, automation and future of work, among others.

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