Novartis reviews

There is no training process in place and they mostly depend on lateral experienced hiring to get work done. No proper knowledge management process in place. HR team is largely external contract employees and there is no process in place to look after skill / career development of employees. In past have hired from IITs for entry level positions. Even these bright individuals could not really make anything out of their stay in the company mostly because the learning curve is quite flat here. Leadership is largely old people who have spent 5+ years with company. Newer hiring in higher management is from few smaller pharma research firms in India who bring with themselves the KPO culture. They are targeting optimization of money and man-power in Hyderabad office which means lesser budget allocation from HQ and more work for associates. Financial year of Jan-Dec but salary given out in April. >> Means you wait extra 4 months for your bonus. One has to spend minimum 2 year in a role to be eligible for promotion > major source of frustration for newer employees as they are hired at one level behind older employees. While most older employees would have been promoted to Sr. Analyst role in 1.5 years, newer employee with less than 3 year experience are hired as Analyst. My advice > Students of premier institutes like IITs should stay away from entry level or fresher entry here. Pharma in itself is a very different industry and this Novartis set up is not an ideal start to anyone's career. It will surely slow down your growth even if you are initially paid better than other companies coming to campus. Freshers should head to ZS associates if at all they are looking to get into Pharma industry.

Novartis was the first company I worked at post grad. I’ve since worked at 3 other companies and now hold a senior director title. Reflecting back, this was not the best place to work. My manager was a large part to blame, but the company fostered a culture that condoned her personality type and behavior. She was a micromanager to the max, had no respect for peoples time , was inefficient, and a very poor leader. She also exhibited harassment behavior strangely towards male colleagues. She had been at Novartis for close to 20 years. Her behavior was not addressed once in my two years employed there. There was a constant trend of her direct reports quitting because of her. On my exit interview I wanted to give feedback but HR held the interview in the lobby of the building…who can feel comfortable speaking up? The clinical trial management organization felt like high school. It was all about optics and initiatives and who can be the “loudest” about their work. Overall the culture at Novartis was awful.