Georgie McManus is a Junior Medical Writer based in our Manchester office, who recently joined Havas Lynx as part of our 2016 Graduate intake. With a background in Biochemistry, Georgie is passionate about communicating science in a creative and effective way.

After finishing University for good earlier this year, over the Summer I mentally prepared myself to make a start in the working world, and was ready to knuckle down and stop having so much fun. As it turns out only half of this was true. Over the course of the four weeks I’ve now spent at Havas Lynx, I’ve come to learn that the Lynx mentality is very much ‘work hard, play hard’ – and during Freshers’ Week we were introduced to this concept at first hand, and were immersed into the Lynx culture.

Freshers’ week was divided into five distinct and essential skills, each of which possess an imperative role in the work we do at Lynx – Science, Strategy, Creative, Technology and Client Services. Each day we were introduced to Lynx employees who specialised in each skill area, who then shared with us their expertise and experience before placing us in teams and briefing us on various tasks. Throughout the week we were able to meet and work with graduates from different teams within Lynx, and each day were able to collaborate with people we hadn’t worked with previously to come up with new, creative ideas which we then presented as a team. I found it intriguing to work with graduates from different disciplines – each person’s approach to a task was completely unique and this helped shape our creative ideas each day providing a great insight into how each role has its own fundamental contribution.

The day I most enjoyed throughout the week was Thursday, the Technology based day. The morning kicked off with a fascinating talk on previous Lynx projects, where technology had been used to connect young patients suffering with eczema, train Japanese healthcare professionals and improve adherence in kids and young adults taking growth hormone therapy. After this introduction we were then divided into groups and were instructed to come up with technological solutions to combat the problems which are currently faced in care homes. Each group came up with unique concepts including a new care home app with individual patient profiles, a sensor belt which detects when a patient has fallen and a wearable which monitors a patient’s health and wellbeing. Following this, we were all placed into different teams and competed in a GPS challenge – which essentially involved running all over Manchester whilst attempting to answer various landmark based questions against the clock. We then raced to the Hard Rock Café where celebratory drinks were waiting for us, followed by a delicious meal at Wagamama.

Freshers’ week was a fantastic experience to introduce everyone to #LYNXLife, to absorb the culture and understand the opportunities we will have over the duration of the graduate scheme. I couldn’t have imagined a more enjoyable and engaging week, and my advice to anyone thinking of applying for the 2017 graduate scheme would be: absolutely go for it, you won’t regret it!