How to Get a Job as a Pharmacy Technician in 2020

If you’re looking to make your way into healthcare – a field projected to be highly stable for decades to come – consider becoming a pharmacy technician! It’s got all the benefits of working in the healthcare industry without needing a clinical background. Pharmacy technicians certainly play an important role: they are the face of the pharmacy and deliver much-needed relief to their customers. The position allows you to help others while providing you with excellent job security. The best pharmacy techs need to have high attention to detail and strong math skills. Download JobFlare today and prove to employers that you’ve got the skills it takes to succeed!

Pharmacy technicians keep everything running smoothly for both the pharmacist they report to and the customers they serve. A typical day-in-the-life of a pharmacy tech includes tasks like giving out medications to customers, counting pills or measuring amounts of medications for prescriptions, organizing the inventory, keeping track of the medications in stock, entering customer information, and possibly medical billing. All these tasks keep pharmacy technicians on their toes, and no two days are exactly alike. As a pharmacy tech, you can work at retail drug stores, in grocery stores, mail-order pharmacies, and hospitals.

Starting off with a job as a pharmacy technician can open a lot of doors for your career! Working as a pharmacy tech can help set you apart when applying to pharmacology programs (and later, when you’re applying to pharmacist jobs). It can also be great experience for becoming a nuclear pharmacy technician, the medical professionals who prepare chemotherapy drugs. If you’re interested in the drug industry itself, pharmacy tech experience can also be a way to stand out when applying to jobs in pharmaceutical sales.

Pharmacy Technician

US Median Salary
$30,920/year or $14.86/hour

Education Requirements
High School Diploma or GED
Some states and employers prefer candidates with a pharmacy technician certificate, but it is not necessary to be considered for the role unless you’re trying to work in a hospital.

Robot Risk Rating

92%

HIGH AUTOMATION RISK

(Source: Will Robots Take My Job)

You'd be great for this position if...

– You enjoy working with people
– You’re patient
– You’re empathetic
– You’re helpful
– You’re tech savvy
– You’re dependable

Robot Risk Rating

92%

HIGH AUTOMATION RISK

(Source: Will Robots Take My Job)

You'd be great for this position if...

– You enjoy working with people
– You’re patient
– You’re empathetic
– You’re helpful
– You’re tech savvy
– You’re dependable

Resume Tips for Pharmacy Technicians

To have a successful career as a pharmacy technician, there are certain skills that hiring managers know to look for. Take inventory of these important qualities and emphasize them in your resume:

High attention to detail
Comfortable working with numbers
Customer oriented
Good with computers
Organizational skills
A strong commitment to ethics
Able to work on a team
Data entry with high accuracy

If you don’t have much on-the-job experience, include things like…

Prior experience working in stock rooms, customer service, or the retail industry
Volunteer experience, especially working in hospitals or nursing homes
Familiarity with basic medical terminology
Any additional strengths, like being multilingual, working in a laboratory environment, or tutoring experience

If you’re still feeling stuck on what skills to list in your resume, check the job description! Hiring managers list the key qualities they’re looking for, so you can score serious points for including them.

Interview Pointers for Pharmacy Technicians

Prior to your interview, be sure to think of examples of personal experience applicable to the role:

Discuss a time when you handled an upset individual. What did you do to calm them down?
Describe a time when you worked on a team to fix a problem.
Talk about a time when you had to accommodate the needs of someone you disagreed with and how you dealt with the situation.
Provide the hiring manger with your conflict resolution tactics and why you think they work well for you.
Give an example of a time when your communication skills saved the day.

Be prepared to answer questions like: