Pharmacy Technician University

Summary: Becoming a Pharmacy Technician isn’t that hard.  Many states allow you to train on the job rather than attend a school.  Don’t worry if you don’t have prior medical work experience – one of my best technicians was that way.  Your training and examination can be finished in as little as three to six months.

Question: How hard is it to become a pharmacy technician?  I’m 42 years old and have worked as an administrative assistant for pretty much all my working life.  I’m looking for a change.  I like the idea of a pharmacy technician because I don’t want to try to get into pharmacy school and the market seems to be good for technicians.  But I wanted to find out from someone who is in the field first.

Let’s take your question in chunks.

First of all, regarding the difficulty of becoming a pharmacy technician.  Over the last 10 years I’ve trained at least 6 pharmacy technicians.  One of them was from the ground up – not knowing anything about the medical field at all and within two years was one of the best technicians I ever had.  I hated to see her go.  So, I have to commend you because it doesn’t sound like you are letting your lack of previous medical experience scare you off from going for it and I hope that little example shows you that if you are willing to put in the time and effort you can certainly make it happen.

Which leads to the crux of your question: how hard is it?  Well, the technician I referred to above did eventually excel, but her first three months or so were pretty tough going because she had never seen the inside of a pharmacy let along be exposed to hundreds of brand and generic names, pharmacy systems or a dozen other little nuances that only happen in pharmacy.  So, I’d say it can get pretty intimidating right out of the bat if you have absolutely no experience.

I should preface this: each state has different requirements for their technicians.  My state allows us to take in candidates, train them and then, allow them to take the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board (PTCB) exam.  Once (and if) they pass they then received the initials CPhT (Certified Pharmacy Technician).  I think you’ll find most states follow this general process.  In short, you can’t become a true Pharmacy Technician until you pass this exam.  And you won’t get true Pharmacy Technician pay until you do.

Now, there are all sorts of schools – online and off – that purport to help you speed the process along.  Point blank: I don’t think any of them are really that helpful.  At least from the prices I’ve seen them charging.  You don’t need to pay hundreds of dollars (sometimes thousands) to go take classes then pass the test then go look for a job.  My advice is to reverse that and look for a job where you can get paid to train and learn.

Again, some states may not allow you to do it this way.  I can only speak for my experience and preference: and that is I’d rather have someone come to me cold off the street because while the first month or two might be rough – I’d be able to train them ‘my way’ with what I think are the important things to know about.

Which leads to my second major point and one of my favorite sayings regarding Pharmacy Technicians: ” a great pharmacy technician will make a bad job or day bearable.  A bad pharmacy technician will make a great job unbearable.”

In many ways I view my technicians as an extension of myself.  If I have to do a bunch of hand-holding 24/7 then it defeats the whole purpose of having a tech.  But, if I have a tech who is thinking a step ahead, who can pick up basic concepts quickly and is a fairly quick on the computer system then that’s something I can work with.  In short, you have to be willing to work hard and have some common sense.  Do you have those things?  If so, you can do decently as a Pharmacy Technician.

Salaries are all over the lot so you’ll simply have to look around in your area.  I would say that you’ll do better than you did as an administrative assistant – but you’ll never get rich doing it.  Top tier techs in my area can make $20 an hour or more.  But, this is very rare.  Fifteen bucks an hour is very doable.  Again, this will vary with geography.

When it’s all said and done I’ve been able to take techs from knowing zero on day one to passing their exam by day 90.  This may be faster than average but for sure you should be able to get your license by six months out.  And, you can do it without a big investment in time and money.  Hope that helps.

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.