Pharmaceutical Resume Examples, Skills and Keywords

Pharmacies are found in many places, from hospitals to local corner stores. These highly-regulated businesses stay very busy, so it takes a qualified team of specialists to keep it running. Pharmacists and technicians work together, keeping medication in stock and making sure that patients get their prescriptions. To keep up with demand, most locations need multiple professionals, each with their own unique pharmacy skills, on staff.

If you want to work in a pharmacy, you’ll need a resume that meets the hiring team’s expectations. Different pharmacy jobs have dramatically different requirements. If you submit the same resume for a role as a pharmacist and a role as a pharmacy technician, you might lose out on both jobs.

Instead, tailor your resume to the specific position you want. If you’re qualified for a variety of pharmaceutical positions, it’s worth taking the time to create different resumes for each one. Employers can tell when you’re using a generic resume. In a competitive field like the pharmaceutical industry, you need to give yourself every advantage.

If you want to write an excellent pharmaceutical resume, you can start by reading the resumes of successful candidates. These three pharmaceutical resume examples can help you decide what to say when you apply for your next great role.

Pharmacies are busy places, so hiring teams want to bring in new staff as soon as possible. To save themselves time, they’ll use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to filter out unqualified candidates. These systems check your application for resume keywords, and they’ll remove you from consideration if those keywords aren’t found. That’s why it’s so important to include the right pharmaceutical skills in your resume.

Salaries for pharmaceutical roles can vary dramatically, but in general, roles that require more education will have much higher salaries than entry-level positions. If you’re considering a pharmaceutical career, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether the higher wage is worth the years of additional schooling.

Pharmacy technician certification programs take nine months to two years. They’ll cover topics like pharmacology, billing, and medical laws, and they culminate in the Pharmacy Technician Certification Exam (PTCE). You can take it further and get an associate’s degree, which takes two years but prepares you more thoroughly for the position.‌

You’ll need to pursue a Doctor of Pharmacy degree (Pharm.D.) to become a fully qualified pharmacist.

To get your doctorate in pharmacy, you need an undergraduate degree in a relevant field, like biology. A Pharm.D. program usually takes four years and covers the science of medications, basic medical training, and patient management skills. If you choose to become a clinical pharmacist, you may also need a specialist certificate from your state pharmacy board.