A Great Pharmacy Technician Resume
Formulating a Great Pharmacy Technician Resume: 6 Tips and a Free Template
We’ve covered how to become a pharmacy technician. The next step is landing a job! Formulating a great resume is one of the most important things you can do to increase your chances of getting a job as a pharmacy technician. Getting your national certification and/or completing a training program helps you stand out against other applicants. That effort is diminished, however, if you don’t effectively represent your story and skill set while applying. Writing a great resume isn’t hard, but it does take a little bit of planning and effort. There are many formats you can use when creating a resume. Regardless of the format or template you use, there are some common rules to follow for specific components of your resume. These 6 essential tips will put you on the right track, and we even give you a free template at the end!
1. Tailor Your Resume to the Job
It’s a common misconception that there is only one edition to your updated resume. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Each job requires different skills or experiences. You should modify your resume with each application to reflect how you match with the job requirements.
My advice is to have a generic resume to serve as a starting point for each application. This resume should include your entire relevant work history, education, any volunteer work, and skills you possess that are relevant to the pharmacy environment. When you are looking to apply for a job, study the job functions and requirements. Think about experiences or skills you possess that highlight you as a match for the position. These may already be represented in your generic resume, but make sure they are highlighted above and beyond other pieces of your story that are less relevant. You will also find that you have experiences or skills not listed on your generic resume: now is the time to add them!
2. Include an Objective or Summary
Your resume is an advertisement for you as a working professional. Everything included in your resume is meant to sell you as the right hire for the job. The person screening your application may be looking through dozens of them. It is vital that you capture his or her attention within the first paragraph of your resume or it could be discarded before you get a fair shake.
The first major section of your resume should be an objective or a summary. This should be a paragraph at most. Summarize your most important and relevant skills, and also state what you are seeking to accomplish. These should be relevant to the pharmacy technician position. This should also be a genuine statement, and one that shows the hiring manager that your skills and interests align with the position and the company. Read about the mission, vision, and core values on the company’s website, and think of how those may align with your own interests and values. If there is synergy, make sure to incorporate it into your story!
3. Highlight Specific Accomplishments
When listing your employment and education history, make sure to detail projects and initiatives that you led or were part of. Most importantly, highlight the results if there was a positive outcome. Showing your prospective employer that you provided value or had significant achievements is much more persuasive than simply listing the tasks or description of your prior roles. Examples could include good grade performance in school, leading a study group, taking on a special project in your prior employment, or winning employee of the month. Try to think of accomplishments that may be relevant to the position, but this isn’t mandatory. You may feel you don’t have anything “big” enough to highlight: make sure to list the “small” things as you may be underestimating the story they tell about you!
4. List Your Key Skills
Many resumes lack a section dedicated to skills. Don’t let your pharmacy technician resume be one of them! This section is an important one to incorporate our first tip on tailoring your resume to the job. Make sure to highlight any skills you possess that match the skills and requirements in the job description. If you do not have any pharmacy experience, you may still have skills highly relevant to the position. These could include customer service skills, experience performing calculations, experience in billing, and use of information technology. If you took pharmacy technician classes, list some of the key skills or knowledge areas that you acquired.
Be specific here. If you are familiar with pharmacy information systems, list the ones that you are proficient in. If you are a skilled typer, list the number of words per minute that you can accurately input. Lastly, do not underestimate the relevancy of your prior experience and skills to the pharmacy technician role. The job requires many skills and the ability to function within a team. You’d be surprised at how well a seemingly unrelated job experience would translate to your new career.
5. Be Honest
While it is important to highlight yourself as a great candidate, never exaggerate or falsify information. Honesty is an important personal quality, and it is especially important in the pharmacy technician profession. Pharmacy technicians must ensure safe preparation and dispensing of medications, act as the face of the pharmacy, and work closely with medications that are heavily regulated. Building experience and accumulating skills to list on a resume takes a long time, but repairing a damaged reputation may take forever!
6. Use a Template
These are just 6 general tips on preparing your resume. You may still be wondering how to start and which format to use. Microsoft Word has many templates built in that you can use as a starting point, and you can find many on the internet as well. We’ve made this simple for you by starting with one of Word’s best templates and adding relevant sections and clear instructions. Best of all you get it for free for signing up for our email newsletter.
This free pharmacy technician resume template should make it easy for you to formulate your own. Plus, you’ll get access to our newsletter and valuable resources as they become available!
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