Alessandro Andolfi
How would you describe your role?
I’m Vice Quality Control at the moment. My day to day tasks are to follow and handle pharmaceutical projects in specific areas: I’m dealing with gas-chromatography and liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry. I recently had the opportunity to work on the determination of Nitrosamines, which stepped into the limelight because of the Ranitidine case. Since then, a new young team was formed and hi-tech instruments were acquired – such as Orbitrap and triple quadrupole mass spectrometers.
The great challenge I face everyday is to be able to find the right priority to the different tasks. You are just one guy, Customers are many and they all need you as soon as possible and with your maximum precision. Fortunately I can rely on my 3 right-hand men, my 3 Heads of Department, which daily assist and help me. I’m lucky to have such a fantastic team.
What do you enjoy the most about your job?
Everyday there’s something to face or discover. Although tasks are more or less similar, issues can vary very often. Just do not despair: what today is a problem will be solved and won’t be a problem tomorrow!
I’m blessed with living this job with a lot of passion and I’m convinced it’s very important to live it this way. It allows you to have fun doing what you do for a living.
Who has influenced your career the most and how do you see yourself in the future?
I’ll go with my dad. He’s not a chemist, but he passed on to me the dedication and the importance of work. He gave me the hunger and desire to grow. The future may hold changes for me but they don’t scare me at all. I’m intrigued by the idea of taking steps forward, even in different businesses. Well, maybe going abroad is quite complicated with two beautiful little daughters… never say never, but family first!
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learnt as a Manager?
The biggest thing I’ve learnt about managing people and resources is that the human aspect is as important as complicated. While on the technical side, here in LabAnalysis, we are at an excellent level, on the human and empathetical one we’re still lining up the shot. I guess it’s not so unusual, nobody teach this at University. To know how to handle a chemical analysis is not the same as to manage a group of people, isnt't it?
During the management course that the company allowed us to attend, we learnt a lot of things and now my whole team (15 people, ed.) works better. There are aspects which I’d never thought about. The difficult part is to succeed in applying all of this in everyday life. That’s the real challenge!
Stay tuned with Alessandro's progress in LabAnalysis!
Follow him on LinkedIn!