Pharmacist Hiring Process: How to Recruit Potential Employees For Your Company

Hiring is challenging in any market. It’s especially challenging in today’s competitive landscape. If you’re in the process of pharmacist hiring, you might be wondering how to recruit the best candidate for the job. You not only want to hire someone who knows the ins and outs of prescription drugs, but you also want to hire someone who can work well with customers and fits in well with your team. Developing a pharmacist hiring strategy is best to facilitate the process, from creating the job post to scanning a pharmacist resume and interviewing.

Identify Required Pharmacist Competencies

When you’re starting the pharmacist hiring process, the first step is to get clear on the competencies required for the job.

Beyond critical industry knowledge, experience, education, and licensure, some common pharmacist competencies include:

• Enthusiasm for continuing education
• Determination to succeed
• Friendly and personable
• Team leadership skills
• Tech-savvy
• Ability to handle stressful situations
   

Create a Job Post

Once you’re clear on the competencies and skills you’re seeking, you’re ready to create the job post. Your job post should clearly highlight the job requirements and the skills and competencies for which you’re looking. You also want to highlight what your company has to offer to attract and entice pharmacist candidates. Once the job post is created, it’s time to post it.

Scan Resumes

If you don’t have a recruiter to screen resumes for you, then create a schedule that will free up time to review resumes every two to three days. Otherwise, you might get overwhelmed with the number of pharmacist resumes that come in if you choose only to read them weekly.

As you scan resumes of pharmacist candidates, refer to the competencies and skills list that you created, or refer to the job description. It will help you to quickly weed out resumes that lack the skills and competencies for which you’re looking.

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Prepare for the Interview

Now that you’ve identified the top candidates you’d like to interview from your applications, it’s time to conduct phone screens and in-person interviews. For those that meet your minimum requirements and pass the phone screen, it’s a best practice to develop a list of questions for the in-person interviews. Some example questions for pharmacist candidates include:

Who’s the most challenging customer you’ve dealt with in the past, and how did you handle it?

What resources do you use to research new drugs and drug interactions?

What’s your favorite part of being a pharmacist?

What best practices do you employ when considering how to educate patients about their prescriptions?

Use this list as a starting point to create your own list of questions.

Involve Your Team in the Pharmacist Hiring Process

Getting your team involved in the hiring process will support you in hiring the right fit. It will also give your team a sense that you care about their thoughts and opinions. At the end of the day, the hiring manager has the final say, but gathering insights and thoughts from those that will be working with the pharmacist can give you more information to make your hiring decision.

Highlight Your Culture

If you want to learn how to hire pharmacists that’ll stay with your company and thrive, share your culture and what you have to offer. Culture fit can make a big difference in long-term job satisfaction and retention. Compensation and benefits are important, of course, but go above and beyond to highlight what makes your workplace unique.

Refer to iHirePharmacy’s Resources

iHirePharmacy understands the challenges a company faces with pharmacist hiring in a competitive market. Our employer tips and templates can help you with creating your pharmacist job ad, attracting top talent, reviewing pharmacist resumes, interviewing, and more.