How to Get a Job Right After Pharmacy School
Key takeaways:
Getting licensed as a pharmacist requires four things: graduating from an accredited pharmacy school, meeting the state’s requirements for practice hours, passing the pharmacist licensure exam (NAPLEX), and passing the law exam, which in most states is the MPJE.
There are a lot of resources to help you land your first job, whether you are graduating or completing a residency. Traditional job boards, USAJobs, and company career pages are great places to start.
Read the licensure requirements carefully, especially the number of hours required. Be careful, especially with whether all of those hours can come from rotations.
From both my own personal experience and from talking to students on rotation, I have realized that a common gap in pharmacy education is helping students navigate the post-graduation world. Yes, we eventually do figure it out, but it is certainly more stressful than if we had had some guidance before leaving school. Here’s a road map to post-graduation life.
The first step is getting licensed
If you’ve just graduated or are graduating soon from a pharmacy school in the U.S., you will be following the process for initial licensure, sometimes called licensure by examination.
The four requirements for initial licensure are:
1) Graduate from pharmacy school. If you’re reading this article, congratulations! You are likely getting ready for this milestone. To become licensed, the school you graduated from must be recognized by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE). While rarely an issue, it is worth mentioning because ACPE has rescinded accreditation before. There have also been cases of pharmacy schools that never had status with the ACPE.
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2) Obtain the required hours. In most but not all cases, you will earn all your required hours from rotations. It is important to read requirements for rotations very carefully, though, because states like California and South Carolina require additional intern hours. (Check the Boards of Pharmacy website for the most up-to-date requirements.) If you are currently working in a pharmacy, be sure to register those hours with your state’s board of pharmacy so you can use them as intern hours; you might not be allowed to retroactively log them. If you are working as a pharmacy technician, you will need to first register as a pharmacy intern to be able to log hours.
3) Pass the NAPLEX. The North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination is required by all boards of pharmacy. It consists of 225 questions given over 6 hours, and tests general practice knowledge. It’s taken once after graduation.
4) Pass the MPJE (or equivalent). Most states require the Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Examination. California, again, is a notable exception, and has the CPJE instead. Every other state has its own MPJE to test knowledge of local laws so, unlike the NAPLEX, you will be required to take it for each state in which you are pursuing licensure.
Follow this step-by-step guide for initial licensure
1) Submit the application for initial licensure in each state where you would like to obtain a license.
2) Have your school’s registrar send official transcripts to those state boards to verify your graduation.
3) Afterward, the boards will send you an authorization to test.
4) Using the authorization to test, sign up to take the NAPLEX and MPJE. I recommend scheduling at least a week, and maybe 2 weeks, between each of these to give you time to fully review and prepare. Because these tests are administered through an outside vendor, you do not need to take the exam in the state you are pursuing licensure. (I took the Hawaii MPJE in South Carolina, much to the curiosity of the person working at the testing center.)
5) After you take both tests and pass them, the board will mail you a temporary license. They will mail you an official license later, but once you receive your temporary license — congratulations! You are now a pharmacist.
There are other pathways to licensure in most states
1) Score transfer: Similar to your initial licensure, this is where you choose your NAPLEX scores to be sent to additional states. Choose those states carefully, because you only have 89 days after taking the NAPLEX to do this.
2) Licensure transfer (reciprocity): With this process, you are using your existing license as a basis for becoming licensed in another state. It requires only that you verify your existing license and take that state’s MPJE. Most states require some experience (6 months to 1 year) before you can use this process.
3) Foreign licensure: This path is only for graduates of a pharmacy school outside the U.S. It comes with considerable additional requirements, including hours of practice in America, proof of English proficiency, and passing the FPGEE.
The second step is finding a job
You’ll want to start looking for a job early, assuming you aren’t doing a residency, so this step might actually be considered the first one.
One of the best ways to connect with potential employers is through rotations. Do a stellar job on your rotations, come prepared, and, most importantly, jump in and help out whenever and wherever you are needed. View every one of your rotations as a job interview, because you might want to work there one day — or, at the very least, need a recommendation letter.
The first graduating student of mine I hired came in for rotations and, right after saying “hello,” he asked “Is there anything I can do to help you?” I was rearranging part of the pharmacy at the time, so he was offering to help me move furniture. Most hiring managers, myself included, highly value that can-do and will-do attitude.
If you’re searching for jobs outside of your connections, here are some great places to start:
1) Traditional job boards: GlassDoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn Jobs are all useful sites, among others. Casting a wide net and registering with at least two or three of these is a good idea, because their search engines produce slightly different results.
2) Company career pages: Career pages are too often overlooked by the popular search engines. However, one strategy for finding a job is to collect the names of companies that you are interested in, and checking their career pages directly. This can be especially helpful when looking for nontraditional jobs, because the role you are seeking won’t necessarily have keywords like “pharmacist” or “PharmD” in the job description, which would make them more visible on a job board.
3) USAJobs: Virtually all government jobs can be found on USAJobs. That includes top pharmacy employers like the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service. There are times when contract positions don’t always appear on the site (a big exception I’m aware of is with the Naval Hospital Okinawa) but, for the most part, USAJobs is the go-to place for federal opportunities.
Even if you complete a residency, these same resources will help you find your next job. Many of the government positions require or prefer a residency, and many of the jobs for residency-trained pharmacists will also appear on job boards and company career pages.
Lessons learned: My own journey after graduation
I initially chose to get licensed in South Carolina and Hawaii. I found a job floating upstate in South Carolina, but I also had plans to fulfill my dream of moving to Hawaii.
After applying for primary licensure in South Carolina, I used score transfer to get licensed in Hawaii. The licensing process in Hawaii was straightforward: Apply, send NAPLEX scores to the board, and pass the Hawaii MPJE.
The process in South Carolina, however, was problematic. I had misunderstood the hours requirement and thought my pharmacy rotations would be enough. After graduation, I realized they were not, so I was stuck working as a graduate intern for several months until I finally could get my license. To make things worse, South Carolina required a notarized form to be completed by the pharmacy manager from each store where I had worked. (The district manager was not allowed to sign on behalf of all stores.)
I had been floating to help cover technician vacations, so I had worked in nearly 20 stores! I ended up hiring a mobile notary to drive around with me over two weekends collecting signatures. It was a nightmare, so I tell that story to every student I can and include it here in the hopes that no one else will go through that to become licensed.
The bottom line
It can be intimidating trying to figure out how to become a pharmacist and get your career going after pharmacy school, but these tips will help you navigate that milestone in your life. By understanding pharmacist licensure requirements, following the recommended step-by-step process, researching your state’s requirements, and having an effective job search strategy, you’ll be well equipped to finally find the pharmacist position you have been working so hard for all along.
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