Pharmacy Technician University

Summary: When looking for a pharmacy technician job it may be tempting to look at online job boards. Many jobs never make it to those places because they are filled through personal networks first.

Dear Curtis: While I’m not a technician yet, I got online to do some searches for jobs and wasn’t coming up with a lot of results in my area. I’m not sure if this really means anything or – maybe becoming a pharmacy technician is something I shouldn’t do because there aren’t many jobs?

Understand that there are a couple of different ways to answer your question based on my ability to see the future. But, before I get to that, let me say one thing: I believe there are a fair amount of pharmacy technician jobs but, I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find them in the usual places like online job boards.

My Experience Finding Pharmacy Technicians

Over the years I’ve been involved in the process of hiring a number of pharmacy technicians. In almost every case, the best technicians weren’t found by us advertising. On the contrary. We put out our feelers in our own networks and started getting names of people who would be a good fit.

You see, in our situation, we were much more concerned about the technicians personality than their ability to be a technician right off the bat. I don’t mean to downplay the importance of knowing how to do your job. That is important.

But, to us, having someone on our team who was a good ‘fit’ was paramount. But that was just us. And, we found that when we advertised any job we had to weed through a whole lot more applicants – most of them poor fits – then we did through our personal network.

Additionally, our pharmacy was a little unique. So we knew we were going to have to, in a sense, retrain a technician anyways. So we were OK with hiring someone with little experience. That should be pretty reassuring news to you, I would think.

Now, with that being said, I do believe that the quantity and quality of pharmacy technician jobs, overall, is on the decline.

First of all, there the issue of automation. Companies know that it’s cheaper in the long run to replace as much of the process as they can with robots, rather than human beings. Again, I’ve been ridiculed for saying this. But I know it to be true.

This goes for pharmacists as well as technicians.

Also, as more and more ‘schools’ pop up online the number of people calling themselves technicians rises. In classic economics: the employers now have the upper hand because they have an abundant supply of technicians applying for fewer open positions. Making your network all the more important.

Like anything, my advice would be to position yourself as more than just a pharmacy technician or commodity. Call the pharmacies in your area. Pick their brains on what they want in a great pharmacy technician and how they go about hiring them.

I know that seems kind of odd, but again, people hire people. They want someone who is not only going to be a great worker and employee – but someone who they just genuinely like. Your likely going to be working in a pretty confined space with these folks for 8, 10 or 12 hours a day. You want to make sure you like the person.

So, go out and meet other technicians and pharmacists. Come in and introduce yourself (you’d be amazed at how many times this happened at my pharmacy over the years. While we often didn’t have a need at the time, the fact that they showed initiative set them apart).

When your network has expanded you’ll likely find yourself in the enviable position of finding out about the jobs before they hit the big job boards. Which explains why you may not be finding ‘great’ jobs in your searches that you’ve performed thus far.

Summary: A day in the life of a hospital pharmacy technician can vary – which tends to be a good thing. There are downsides compared to retail pharmacy. While the downsides are few, they can be deal-killers for some technicians.

Question: Could you describe what a typical day of work might be like for a pharmacy technician in the hospital setting? Is it more hectic? More varied? What would I be doing? Those sorts of things.

Before I give you my answer I want you to understand that my experience working in a hospital pharmacy is ten years old. I highly doubt it has changed very much. But it is a bit dated.

Let’s start with when you’ll be working. Which can vary quite a bit in a hospital pharmacy.

In big hospitals technicians may work rotating shifts around the clock. In the hospitals I worked in there were basically two rotating shifts that were covered by the technicians. The night shift, because it was slower, was covered just by pharmacist.

So, the early shift may come in about 6AM or 7AM. The second shift may pop in around 11AM or noon and work until the late evening.

Of course, this varies depending on whether you work eight or ten hour shifts.

Depending on the shift you are working and the size of the hospital there are some varied activities. Usually, there are technicians assigned to work in the IV hood mixing drugs. Other technicians might start out their shift by filling bubble packs to go out on the floor. To later be checked by the pharmacist. Still others may be ‘coverage’ and may be floating around. Others might be doing order entry.

In smaller hospitals, the technicians will often find themselves in more varied roles because they are usually short-staffed on pharmacist. So, you may be headed out onto the floor to gather orders or to run an errand for the pharmacy.

Working in a hospital permits you something that is severely lacking in retail pharmacy, to move around a bit and see a different scenery.

I always felt like that was one of the nice things about hospital pharmacy was that it was varied. This goes for the pharmacist as well as the technician. It keeps it a little more interesting and varied.

Another nice thing about working in a hospital is that you have enough coverage to go and get a lunch. It was extremely rare to see someone NOT take a lunch in a hospital setting. Basically, if it happened it was by choice.

Of course, there may be other things that you might do. But those are the big things: bubble packing, mixing IV’s, restocking shelves, order entry and serving as coverage for the retail pharmacy in the hospital.

However, the one thing I did notice about the technicians (and the pharmacists) in the hospital setting was that they were much more ‘clicky’ than in retail. This could be my own perception, but I’ve heard this from a number of folks who’ve worked hospital pharmacy.

In my experience, if you can learn not to fall into that trap technicians can be pretty happy in a hospital. For those who aren’t, retail ends up being the next step because the staffs are smaller and there tends to be a chance that they can fit in a little better.

A lot of technicians who I knew who worked retail did so because they ‘hated’ the clickiness of the staff’s at hospital pharmacies.