Landing a hospital pharmacist job as a new graduate?

[Hedgehog32]

Fired? So there’s more to your story that meets the eye... sounds like a red flag to me.

Also, keep in mind that while jobs outsourced to staffing agencies are likely the hard to fill jobs (which is why an organization would even bother to use a third party to recruit, rather than simply posting their position online), these are also the jobs that are probably getting the most applicants, because they’d be getting the “everyone who wants anything, anywhere in the country” type of applicant who won’t be applying to “regular” jobs. This is not to say that “regular” jobs are any less competitive than jobs posted by a staffing agency, but in my opinion you’d have a more favorable hit-or-miss rate by applying to “regular” jobs because they are less visible to other job seekers than the ones staffing agencies try to fill (which EVERYONE will be told about). It’s a simple concept: the number of qualified candidates gunning for a job is irrelevant if the majority of them don’t hear about the job to begin with.

On the topic of me getting fired, I know that it obviously looks like an obvious red flag, but the situation isn't what it looks like. To try and make a long story short, I hadn't been scheduled to work in a few weeks, and then last week (after I had made this thread) I got a phone call from one of the higher-up pharmacy managers who said that they really would like to open the intern position up for someone who can work more last-minute shifts during the week, which isn't really feasible for me in consideration of my rotation schedule. She asked me to voluntarily resign so that I would still be eligible to work for the same hospital network in the future, and she said that she and any of the other pharmacy managers I worked with would be happy to give me a favorable LOR for either residency (including for their own program) or job applications.

I thought I was the only one who had been fired until I talked a few days later with another intern who said that she, too, had been fired on the same day. FWIW, she had worked as a technician for the same hospital system for over a decade prior to going to pharmacy school. Then I found out from her that all the interns had been fired.

Back in 2018, the hospital system was bought out by a large (the largest... ?) hospital network in the southeast and was "converted" to one of the larger network's facilities throughout 2019, so I'm thinking that might have had something to do with all of us interns getting canned. I asked the manager who gave me the news if there had been any performance-related issues, and she stressed the fact that it was simply a case of their needs and my availability just not matching up. Of course, this doesn't explain why they fired EVERY intern.

I agree that it looks like a red flag, though, so I guess I'm just lucky that they gave me the opportunity to voluntarily resign. Still, I was hoping to keep the job throughout my P4 year (I had been working every other weekend fairly consistently). To be honest, I'm still kind of blindsided by the firing because I went out of my way to accommodate almost every single work request they asked of me over the last 2 years, including every holiday (entire week of Christmas and New Years and Thanksgiving, Easter weekend, Labor Day, etc.), emergency days when techs would call out at the last minute, filling in at one of the outpatient pharmacies for a month straight when a FT tech had to take medical leave, etc. because I wanted to make a good impression as the guy who was willing to accommodate everyone else by working the shifts nobody else wanted to (or could) work. Just 6 months prior to my start date, they'd hired a new grad who worked as an intern for the same hospital network into a 7 on/7 off second shift position. I had hoped to have the same luck, but things obviously didn't work out like that.

I get that they have specific scheduling demands that have to be fulfilled, but I think that what pisses me off about the whole thing can be summarized by what you said in your post: any instance of a firing automatically raises a red flag, and yet in this instance I did literally nothing wrong that would've constituted a reason or justification for the firing. Anyways...

To respond to the other part of your post, I agree with what you said about the staffing agency positions being more competitive to get jobs with than employers posting "regular" positions. It was actually suggested to me to look into contracting positions by the recruiter I talked with from the AZ hospital network, so that's why I looked into it in the first place. However, it's been about two weeks since I emailed the agency she suggested, and they haven't even bothered to respond to me, so... yeah.

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[BidingMyTime]

Why consider PA if there are other options rather than hospital? Whats about retail, independent, LTC,...? Why wasting money if you could have made money using your pharmacy degree? Your intern experience will be a plus once you work as a pharmacist, then apply to hospital moving forward.
I think you should worry how to get a job after graduated, or applying for residency. PA is a bad move imo, adding more debt for no reason.
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I don't know, I'm thinking s/he should move on and leave the pharmacist jobs for people who want them. While yeah, it's personally a waste of time/money for this individual to have gone through pharmacy school and never be a pharmacist, if they really aren't interested in being a pharmacist, they might as well become a professional student and leave the pharmacist jobs to those who will appreciate them.

 

[Hedgehog32]

I don't know, I'm thinking s/he should move on and leave the pharmacist jobs for people who want them. While yeah, it's personally a waste of time/money for this individual to have gone through pharmacy school and never be a pharmacist, if they really aren't interested in being a pharmacist, they might as well become a professional student and leave the pharmacist jobs to those who will appreciate them.

Well, that's not how I had intended to come across. Of course I would appreciate a pharmacist job; the issue is of actually getting one. To put it another way, I think it's a given that the residency grads here in my city want pharmacist jobs, and yet most of them still don't have them. I'd say they're in the same boat as the 40+ pharmacists (including a handful of PGY-2 grads) who applied within the first few hours of the job being posted the other week for a hospital pharmacist in AZ.

Obviously, you're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree with your assessment that I don't want (and wouldn't appreciate) a pharmacist job, as I would hope that it's fairly obvious to people that I'm talking from a perspective of pragmatism. You seem to talk as if I'm voluntarily turning down job offers that have been thrown at me by implying that I don't want/wouldn't appreciate a pharmacist job, but this doesn't really make sense since there isn't exactly an abundance of jobs out there to appreciate in the first place, even for pharmacists who have experience and who have completed residencies.

 

[BidingMyTime]

I agree that it looks like a red flag, though, so I guess I'm just lucky that they gave me the opportunity to voluntarily resign. Still, I was hoping to keep the job throughout my P4 year (I had been working every other weekend fairly consistently). To be honest, I'm still kind of blindsided by the firing because I went out of my way to accommodate almost every single work request they asked of me over the last 2 years, including every holiday (entire week of Christmas and New Years and Thanksgiving, Easter weekend, Labor Day, etc.), emergency days when techs would call out at the last minute, filling in at one of the outpatient pharmacies for a month straight when a FT tech had to take medical leave, etc. because I wanted to make a good impression as the guy who was willing to accommodate everyone else by working the shifts nobody else wanted to (or could) work. Just 6 months prior to my start date, they'd hired a new grad who worked as an intern for the same hospital network into a 7 on/7 off second shift position. I had hoped to have the same luck, but things obviously didn't work out like that.

This really sounds like a toxic work environment and that something else is going on (assuming you aren't leaving out any facts of the story.)
Possibly something coming from higher ups who don't care about your willingness to fill in and are looking to either hire 1) someone who will work cheaper (never mind they will get what they pay for) or 2) someone who has no life outside of working PRN for them (again, they will get the quality such a person would give them.)

 

[BidingMyTime]

Obviously, you're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree with your assessment that I don't want (and wouldn't appreciate) a pharmacist job, as I would hope that it's fairly obvious to people that I'm talking from a perspective of pragmatism. You seem to talk as if I'm voluntarily turning down job offers that have been thrown at me by implying that I don't want/wouldn't appreciate a pharmacist job, but this doesn't really make sense since there isn't exactly an abundance of jobs out there to appreciate in the first place, even for pharmacists who have experience and who have completed residencies.

You are voluntarily turning down jobs if you are only willing to work in big cities/certain geographical areas. Advice I give in real life to people, if you only want to work in a certain city/geographical area, look at what jobs are most need in that city/area....then look at how your skills/interests would fit into those jobs. If you don't mind working literally anywhere, and you want to be a pharmacist (and can get the degree without a huge amount of debt), then go for it. If you only want to work in Chicago (or other pharmacist saturated area), then more likely than not you will be an unemployed pharmacist and should look into other opportunities.

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

This really sounds like a toxic work environment and that something else is going on (assuming you aren't leaving out any facts of the story.)
Possibly something coming from higher ups who don't care about your willingness to fill in and are looking to either hire 1) someone who will work cheaper (never mind they will get what they pay for) or 2) someone who has no life outside of working PRN for them (again, they will get the quality such a person would give them.)

Or 3) Hospital is looking to get rid of all paid intern positions to cut costs, and this was just a diplomatic way to communicate that. I have stated before on this forum that “paid interns” are going to be a thing of the past, given that there are so many APPE students that can provide better quality service than an intern can (theoretically, since they are P4’s and not P1-P3’s), so why continue to pay interns at all? If you want “experience,” then volunteer with us for free.

 

[Hedgehog32]

You are voluntarily turning down jobs if you are only willing to work in big cities/certain geographical areas. Advice I give in real life to people, if you only want to work in a certain city/geographical area, look at what jobs are most need in that city/area....then look at how your skills/interests would fit into those jobs. If you don't mind working literally anywhere, and you want to be a pharmacist (and can get the degree without a huge amount of debt), then go for it. If you only want to work in Chicago (or other pharmacist saturated area), then more likely than not you will be an unemployed pharmacist and should look into other opportunities.

I'm not sure how much of the thread you've read through, but I've actually been getting in touch with recruiters and DOPs at hospitals literally all over the country, including rural areas. Literally every single person who responded has said that even for their rural facilities, they're receiving so many applications from experienced pharmacists that they can afford to hire only either residency-trained or otherwise highly experienced pharmacists. This is even the case for a position posted recently for Bethel, AK (I talked with the DOP directly). She said that for the position they posted a few weeks ago, they received enough applications from experienced pharmacists that they aren't considering new grads at all.

I actually wouldn't mind working for a limited period of time in a rural area... it's just that the prospect of enduring a residency and then having to go live in a rural area (possibly for most/all of my career) is just something that I unfortunately find to be so discouraging that it's making it difficult for me to find the motivation to push forward.

 

[Hedgehog32]

Or 3) Hospital is looking to get rid of all paid intern positions to cut costs, and this was just a diplomatic way to communicate that. I have stated before on this forum that “paid interns” are going to be a thing of the past, given that there are so many APPE students that can provide better quality service than an intern can (theoretically, since they are P4’s and not P1-P3’s), so why continue to pay interns at all? If you want “experience,” then volunteer with us for free.

I think you probably hit the nail on the head. Even though my hospital paid a relatively low wage to interns (about $14/hr), their technicians start off at several dollars per hour less than that. Also, a few months ago they hired a technician who had just graduated from high school and had zero tech work experience to work the weekends I wasn't scheduled to work, which meant that they hired her to basically do the exact same job as me. They had also told us in late 2018 that the interns would be getting pay raises to $20/hr starting in January 2019, but that ended up falling through (no reason was given).

BTW, the pharmacy manager who called me to let me know I was being fired also mentioned the fact that they don't really utilize interns in a "pipeline" sense anymore like they used, whereby in the old days an intern would usually at least be offered a PRN/PT position upon graduation, and that it made sense for them to go ahead and let me go on that basis as well. She said that they can't really justify directly hiring interns anymore on the basis of fairness when their own residency grads are having a hard time getting positions within the hospital system. I can give you more specific details about what she and the other employees told me via PM if you'd like.

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

I think you probably hit the nail on the head. Even though my hospital paid a relatively low wage to interns (about $14/hr), their technicians start off at several dollars per hour less than that. Also, a few months ago they hired a technician who had just graduated from high school and had zero tech work experience to work the weekends I wasn't scheduled to work, which meant that they hired her to basically do the exact same job as me. They had also told us in late 2018 that the interns would be getting pay raises to $20/hr starting in January 2019, but that ended up falling through (no reason was given).

BTW, the pharmacy manager who called me to let me know I was being fired also mentioned the fact that they don't really utilize interns in a "pipeline" sense anymore like they used, whereby in the old days an intern would usually at least be offered a PRN/PT position upon graduation, and that it made sense for them to go ahead and let me go on that basis as well. She said that they can't really justify directly hiring interns anymore on the basis of fairness when their own residency grads are having a hard time getting positions within the hospital system. I can give you more specific details about what she and the other employees told me via PM if you'd like.

I fully expected this. What people tend to focus on when it comes to saturation talks is the pharmacist job market for new grads and beyond, but saturation/too many pharmacy students has a huge impact on everyone in the profession even before the students hit the job market. Declining quality of education (not enough qualified professors to teach, schools having tough time placing students on rotations and thereby resorting to bribery/paying $$$ for sites to take them, etc.) and downward pressures on the “pharmacist supply chain” are the two big ones I can think of.

Compared to 10 years ago, residents today are filling the gaps of regular pharmacists. APPE students are filling the gaps of pharmacists/residents. Volunteers would be filling the gaps of interns. Interns will be phased out completely. What do all these things have in common? Pressure to cut costs.

 

[Sabril]

Interesting thread. For those of you who did PGY-1, I hear people complain that residencies "uses residents as staff pharmacists" but is it really a bad thing? Especially if nowadays many places expect you to be residency-trained just to become a staff pharmacist? Not everyone who enters residency wants to be "all clinical" aren't they?

 

[Invokanyetnyet]

FWIW, I work with a guy who was hired last summer as a fresh grad. Evening shift. Fairly rural hospital, about 1.5 hours from nearest pharmacy school. He had been here in the past as an extern, but had no other hospital experience outside rotations. Director was still reluctant to hire him, but did. Probably our hardest-working staff member.

 

[Hedgehog32]

I fully expected this. What people tend to focus on when it comes to saturation talks is the pharmacist job market for new grads and beyond, but saturation/too many pharmacy students has a huge impact on everyone in the profession even before the students hit the job market. Declining quality of education (not enough qualified professors to teach, schools having tough time placing students on rotations and thereby resorting to bribery/paying $$$ for sites to take them, etc.) and downward pressures on the “pharmacist supply chain” are the two big ones I can think of.

Compared to 10 years ago, residents today are filling the gaps of regular pharmacists. APPE students are filling the gaps of pharmacists/residents. Volunteers would be filling the gaps of interns. Interns will be phased out completely. What do all these things have in common? Pressure to cut costs.

That makes sense. In fact and to be honest, I often wondered why they needed to have the intern title in the first place since, aside from occasionally counseling patients at the outpatient pharmacies, most of our job duties mirrored those of techs. When you consider the firing of all of us in light of the fact that they have implemented an official policy of no longer hiring non-residency grads into any positions at all (even if they were interns), it seems like termination of the intern program is the most sensible assumption.

 

[Hedgehog32]

FWIW, I work with a guy who was hired last summer as a fresh grad. Evening shift. Fairly rural hospital, about 1.5 hours from nearest pharmacy school. He had been here in the past as an extern, but had no other hospital experience outside rotations. Director was still reluctant to hire him, but did. Probably our hardest-working staff member.

Good for him! Just out of curiosity, do you know how many other pharmacists applied for the position?

 

[smilePRN]

I can't believe you're considering PA school just because a recruiter suggested it. A walmart store manager once suggested I become an optometrist because their store had an opening for it and not an opening for a pharmacist. I thanked her for her time and said I was not interested in going back to school (or her unsolicited advice).

Don't get me wrong - PAs have great careers. My sister is one and she loves it. But at this point you'd have to be nuts to put yourself through more school and debt to end up with a lower paying job in another potentially saturated field.

 

[Hedgehog32]

I can't believe you're considering PA school just because a recruiter suggested it. A walmart store manager once suggested I become an optometrist because their store had an opening for it and not an opening for a pharmacist. I thanked her for her time and said I was not interested in going back to school (or her unsolicited advice).

Don't get me wrong - PAs have great careers. My sister is one and she loves it. But at this point you'd have to be nuts to put yourself through more school and debt to end up with a lower paying job in another potentially saturated field.

Trust me, the thought of putting myself through more schooling is not appealing at all, but I would rather at least consider doing something else that's in demand (or at least, which will be in demand long enough for me to be able to get some experience in the field before it gets saturated) rather than end up like all the new grads I know (including some who have completed residency) who are 7+ months out of school and still jobless. One option that was suggested to me was to apply to PA school, attend interviews (if I receive invitations to do so), and if accepted, defer the acceptance for a year. That way, I'll have an opportunity to see how things pan out with job and/or residency applications in pharmacy for at least a year before I jump ship.

BTW, I was actually surprised to learn that the ER PAs and NPs at the hospital I was an intern at make $75/hr to start. They technically work for a company that contracts with the hospital called Team Health, so I'm not sure if that's what they start their ER PAs off at in all their contracted facilities or just at the ER here. Of course, I can't say if I'd enjoy the work they do until I at least shadow one of them. I've heard the surgical PAs also do well but that they have to take call all the time and really work for the money.

Also, the recruiter wasn't the first one to suggest I consider applying to PA schools. A couple of my preceptors suggested it as well a while back, but I didn't give it much (really any) consideration at the time since this was before I had gotten in touch with a multitude of recruiters, DOPs, and staffing agencies who have all told me the same thing so far.

 

[samven582]

Have you tried looking for jobs in Pharma?

 

[Hedgehog32]

Have you tried looking for jobs in Pharma?

I did a cursory job search for pharma jobs the other day, but that's about it so far

 

[PharmtoCS]

I wouldn't say that PA school is necessarily a bad idea. The prospect of landing a non-retail job right out of graduation is almost slim to none, and that is even more so since the OP does not want to complete a residency. In this case PA school would be worth since it allows the OP a much better chance to find a decent paying, fulfilling job compared to pharmacy where the vast majority of new grads will be either unemployed or stuck in retail.

 

[Sparda29]

If I ever find myself as Director of Pharmacy, I'm purposely not going to hire pharmacists who did residencies.

 

[Hedgehog32]

I wouldn't say that PA school is necessarily a bad idea. The prospect of landing a non-retail job right out of graduation is almost slim to none, and that is even more so since the OP does not want to complete a residency. In this case PA school would be worth since it allows the OP a much better chance to find a decent paying, fulfilling job compared to pharmacy where the vast majority of new grads will be either unemployed or stuck in retail.

Also, I just want to point out that PA school is just one potential backup plan I've done some superficial research into; it's not like I've settled on applying to PA programs and that's it. I just feel like it would be shortsighted to not at least consider having a backup plan after talking with recruiters, DOP's, and c/o 2019 graduates who are ~7 months out of graduation and are still looking for any job they can find.

 

[BidingMyTime]

I'm not sure how much of the thread you've read through, but I've actually been getting in touch with recruiters and DOPs at hospitals literally all over the country, including rural areas. Literally every single person who responded has said that even for their rural facilities, they're receiving so many applications from experienced pharmacists that they can afford to hire only either residency-trained or otherwise highly experienced pharmacists. This is even the case for a position posted recently for Bethel, AK (I talked with the DOP directly). She said that for the position they posted a few weeks ago, they received enough applications from experienced pharmacists that they aren't considering new grads at all.
I actually wouldn't mind working for a limited period of time in a rural area... it's just that the prospect of enduring a residency and then having to go live in a rural area (possibly for most/all of my career) is just something that I unfortunately find to be so discouraging that it's making it difficult for me to find the motivation to push forward.

I had read through to the part where you were counseled to start looking at retail jobs, and not just hospital jobs. The majority of pharmacist jobs are in retail, if you refuse to consider them, then yes, you may as well give up pharmacy and move on to PA school.

 

[Hedgehog32]

I had read through to the part where you were counseled to start looking at retail jobs, and not just hospital jobs. The majority of pharmacist jobs are in retail, if you refuse to consider them, then yes, you may as well give up pharmacy and move on to PA school.

I definitely can't argue with that (although I'm not necessarily giving up yet). To be totally honest with you, I started pharmacy school with the mindset that I'd be fine with a job in either retail or hospital pharmacy, but after my first retail rotation and upon starting my hospital intern job, I realized I had succumbed to the fallacy that so many pharmacy students end up falling into, which is that I was no longer interested in/considering retail and had set my sights on eventually getting a hospital (or LTC) job. I will admit that even though I knew the job market wasn't good when I had started pharmacy school, I had no idea it was so bad that it would be literally impossible for me (barring having the right connections at a facility somewhere) to get a hospital staffing job *anywhere* in the country, and that the odds would most likely still be against me even if I completed a residency. Obviously I made a mistake by being shortsighted and naive at the time, and I realize it's 100% on me for making that mistake.

(What's even scarier, though, is that I'm being told that the c/o 2019 graduates who didn't work as interns for retail chains are having a hard time finding even retail positions with CVS/Wags in the southeast, so apparently even the retail job market has tightened up significantly as well)

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

Getting a job as a pharmacist is similar to playing in the NFL or NBA - don’t let the players who you see playing on TV fool you, especially the players on the bench who you make mockeries of.

Because for each bench player on a team’s roster there are hundreds of practice squad or junior league players who have tried and failed to get a roster spot and are living off McDonald’s, and for every practice squad/junior league player there are thousands of high school, college and junior college who dreamed of going pro but never made the first cut and now have ruined careers because they spent their entire college education playing sports instead of focusing on academics/a backup plan.

 

[Hedgehog32]

Getting a job as a pharmacist is similar to playing in the NFL or NBA - don’t let the players who you see playing on TV fool you, especially the players on the bench who you make mockeries of.

Because for each bench player on a team’s roster there are hundreds of practice squad or junior league players who have tried and failed to get a roster spot and are living off McDonald’s, and for every practice squad/junior league player there are thousands of high school, college and junior college who dreamed of going pro but never made the first cut and now have ruined careers because they spent their entire college education playing sports instead of focusing on academics/a backup plan.

I didn't get much sleep last night so my mental processing may be a bit off here, but I take that as a pretty strong endorsement for the notion of at least looking into a backup plan (whether it's PA school or something else)?

 

[TerryTerry]

There is no easy trick other than previously established network. I know few people who got a job in a hospital where they had pretty strong connection. This was 5 years ago and I believe they were not hired full time.

There are hundreds of pharmacists trying to get out of retail to work in a hospital. They apply to these automated recurring job posts everyday, and you know that they would do something if there is a simple trick.

There is no easy way to find a pharmacist job anymore. You either have to be damn amazing qualifier or know someone just right.

 

[Hedgehog32]

There is no easy trick other than previously established network. I know few people who got a job in a hospital where they had pretty strong connection. This was 5 years ago and I believe they were not hired full time.

There are hundreds of pharmacists trying to get out of retail to work in a hospital. They apply to these automated recurring job posts everyday, and you know that they would do something if there is a simple trick.

There is no easy way to find a pharmacist job anymore. You either have to be damn amazing qualifier or know someone just right.

Based on what I'm learning the hard way, that pretty much sums it up... and even many of the well-connected pharmacists with established networks are having an extremely hard time finding anything at all in terms of hospital positions.