Pros
Great coworkers, the people are amazing. Typically your immediate supervisor cares about you. PTO is decent and scheduling can be flexible. You will learn valuable skills such as the GXPs, aseptic technique, and best practices. You can potentially get opportunities here without a degree that other companies wouldn’t offer you.
Cons
They make some very questionable decisions. If you work here, get used to hearing that they can’t get head count approved for your department while they purchase a new lab in another state that gets shut down after a year or two or they higher a new senior vice president. Because they can’t afford to higher more analysts but they can somehow afford a new senior vice president?? You can move up in the company without a degree, BUT it often feels predatory because you get the promotion but they don’t pay as well as other companies so you get trapped at the company. You can’t leave because leaving would force you to take a pay cut or demotion since other companies won’t hire you to the same level, but you aren’t paid as much as you should be so you’re stuck working below market value for your job. The pay, it’s not enough. Especially because they are keeping pay the same and yet downsizing the number of employees so every department is working on a skeleton crew. Everyone not in senior leadership is overworked and underpaid. Every department is forced to make their employees work to generate the same revenue with half of the people, that’s a prime recipe for burnout and not for sufficient compensation. They used to be very flexible with schedules, so Nelson was an amazing place to be while you finish school. However, they seem to be getting more strict (probably because they have a skeleton crew) and so they are losing this appeal. They do still offer swing shifts that can make it easier to go to school. So if you want to work here, join as an analyst only to finish your degree or to get some professional experience and then GET OUT! They claim to safeguard global health and yet have pretty bad insurance. It’s safeguarding global health for anyone that’s not a Sotera Health employee. Nelson Labs could absolutely be an amazing place to work, the people that work there are the best and the work they do is so important. However, leadership just keeps making poor decisions that lead it to be worse and worse. It’s truly sad since it was easily five stars when I started.