My husband likes to work out at the gym. He went the other day and couldn’t believe how packed it was. The New Year’s Resolution phenomenon in full swing. Ben (my husband) said to me, “Give it another month, and the gym will be back to normal”. I guess he doesn’t have much faith in all the people there excited about their new founded habit to get their butts out the door and to the gym a month from now.

As we start the New Year, many of us take this step into a new year as a symbolic opportunity to step into doing things differently. The key is whether we can sustain that new commitment to ourselves to make a lasting difference on the way we choose to live. This applies to any intention you set for yourself, like getting yourself a new fit body, a new job, or a new habit (like never being late again).

The first step is recognizing what didn’t serve you.

It might have been bubbling up inside you…a knowing that something didn’t work for you.   For example, in the past, when you searched for jobs, did you mostly search online (isn’t that what everyone does these days to find a job)? What about blasting out your resume to many places online and not hear back from the ones you really wanted to hear from? Did you use the same resume for every application?

Maybe it didn’t work that well, or maybe it worked ok, but boy was it a lot of work. You had a feeling that surely there must be a different less time consuming way.

All those people at the gym recognized the first step.  But why isn’t it always lasting? How can it be different this year with your resolution?

The second step is deciding what you want to commit to.  Commit to it, and then never look back.

Don’t bring any misery of regret, beating yourself up, or memory of your previous habit (or way of doing things) that didn’t serve you before along with you as you create your new habit or new mindset.

When looking for jobs, decide that you will only apply for a few jobs that you are most interested in, and put most of your efforts there. This allows you to take the time to understand the role, get to know the pharmacy or hospital you are most interested in (their vision, leadership, work environment, etc), and highlight yourself in a way that makes them want to chase you.  It also gives you an advantage because knowing this in detail will help you make an impression that other “spray & pray” candidates won’t have a chance in making.  Be committed to doing things differently with your job search & don’t look back.

This year, I’m taking my own medicine. In reflecting about what frustrated me about our company in 2011, this is what came to me…

What didn’t serve us: not being able to serve the pharmacists in our community the way we wanted.  Many pharmacists contacting us for our help, and not enough people/resources to serve them in an effective way that solved their problems/challenges in a timely manner.

What we decide to commit to & never look back from: Pharmacist Job Connection (which was trying to be too many things to too many pharmacists) is getting a facelift.

Pharmacist Job Connection is going to be about helping pharmacists learn how to stand out in their job search to beat their competition for interviews & offers.

RPh Temp Service (our temp division specializing in Indian Health Service travel assignments) will continue to be the most requested temp agency serving Native American pharmacies (IHS/tribal).

Now here’s the exciting news…

Hospital Pharmacist Job Connection is a fresh face in our family…it will exclusively help experienced hospital pharmacists get introduced directly to hiring decision-makers and access jobs before they’re advertised.

If you are a hospital experienced pharmacist (ie, clinical coordinator, clinical pharmacy specialist, informatics pharmacist, PGY2 residency-trained, or pharmacy director/manager), click here to be kept in the loop about how to cut down on your time consuming job-seeking process.

If you are a hospital pharmacy director/hiring manager tired of sifting through hundreds of resumes & getting backed up with your workload, be the first to hear about 1) secrets on how to hire “The One”, or 2) options to hand off searching, finding, & hiring “The One” to experts.

The answer?
It’s simple but not always obvious.

Some pharmacy hiring managers love to hire inexperienced pharmacists with the right attitude and train them to their pharmacy/company’s ways of doing things & groom them.  Others prefer more experienced pharmacists, so management can save time with training.  *Note: in this job market, the definition of inexperienced that I’m referring to is a few years of experience or less.

Here are the 3 most common mistakes of hiring based on experience or inexperience.  You may identify with one of them and gain a few insights, plus save yourself headaches when you hire:

Mistake #1:  Hiring inexperienced people with the right attitude & fit, but not having the time/energy to set them up to meet or exceed your expectations.  You tell yourself you will create a comprehensive training program, but you really don’t have time for this kind of thing.  It gets put on the backburner because of all the other things you HAVE to do.

Before you know it, your new hire is either frustrated and not performing to the way you’d like, or you talk yourself into not needing to create a comprehensive training program.  You tell yourself that the first few week or two of training should’ve been enough.

Even more frustrating, your new hire decides to leave after a short period of time, even though the pharmacist seemed like he/she wanted to stay a long time with you.

Pharmacist Slacking Off

Mistake #2:  Hiring primarily based on experience, and getting excited about someone’s achievements but not being careful with the rest of your screening process (including not following your intuition). You tell yourself that you don’t have to worry as much about assessing their fit, because this person has worked many years at another pharmacy successfully.  Surely they’ll catch on even though they start out performing below your expectation.  You let your guard down and skip over parts of your typical screening process.

Caution (Hiring Alert!):  Working many years at another pharmacy and doing well there doesn’t automatically translate into doing well in your pharmacy’s culture and expectations.  Your potential hire’s previous goals aligned with that employers’, but does his/her current goal align with your pharmacy’s?

Mistake #3: Hiring and allowing someone to continue at your organization when you realize they consume too much of your time (not in a beneficial way), or may be toxic to your staff. You think it will be too much trouble to go out there & look for a new hire again.  You stay in this bad marriage because you committed, right?*  Now, in most cases, I’m all about commitment in a marriage & staying until things get worked out, but having someone on your staff is not completely like a marriage (although there are similarities).

You can have patience & compassion to an extent about your new hire, but if it doesn’t work out, the decision to let him/her go will prevent that person’s ability to affect other staff members’ work.  In fact, hanging on to someone who’s not right for your pharmacy can prevent others from performing their best.You can have a different relationship with your hire who didn’t work out, ie:  an acquaintance, but you don’t need to have them consume your time & emotional energy as a staff member whom your pharmacy’s paying for.

What is the solution to these potential headaches?

If you hire someone inexperienced, take the time to assess how much time and energy it will take of yours and your staffs’ to get your new hire up to speed.  Beyond that, how much time and resources will it take for them to excel?  When you hire someone inexperienced, hiring someone with the right attitude and “fit” becomes even more important.  If you end up finding out after they start & it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out, you’ve just spent a tremendous amount of your energy getting them on board.  Take care in assessing the “fit” and attitude of your inexperienced hire.

If you hire someone experienced, make sure you have someone who has the attitude and “fit” of your pharmacy organization, not just on a short-term basis but a long-term basis.

These common hiring mistakes above can not only happen when hiring a pharmacist for a full-time position, but especially when hiring someone to fulfill a temporary need.  Most of the time when you are pressed for a last-minute need, you really don’t have time to ie, train someone with little experience, or deal with headaches of someone who is not the right fit.

This is where having a relationship with a recruiting company that specializes in the area of pharmacists you’re looking for and who knows you well can really give you value that no one else can.  There is nothing better to be said for fit, experience, & the right attitude.  Sometimes not having the right fit nailed down can really cost you.

When you have a secret weapon who knows you, your pharmacy’s vision, and more about your team so they are sizing up candidates based on much more than experience, the result of finding the right “fit” can save you headaches, time, and beaucoup bucks.

Add that with getting access to the most experienced pharmacists in the area of specialty your pharmacy’s looking to hire, and you have an edge to save yourself a lot of hassle & long-term hiring costs that other pharmacy hiring managers don’t have.

As the year comes to a close, acknowledge yourself for the gift you’ve given your patients and colleagues this year-maybe your clinical intervention saved someone from a serious adverse effect, what you said brightened up someone’s day, or just being you was an inspiration to your co-worker/pharmacy staff even when you didn’t realize it.

As we enter into the new year, I challenge you to join me in taking this on for the next 48 days: decide every moment that you’ll give without bothering how the other person is responding or reciprocating (including in your job)…go to your extreme of giving.  See yourself explode in intelligence & energy.  Be your own source of inspiration to live & expand in every dimension of your life (-inspiration from Paramahamsa Nithyananda).

On the one hand, you can resolve to do just the minimum because you may decide that you don’t like your job or your boss. You may decide to give only how much you feel you are receiving.  But you’ll end up stunting your own creativity, and the person who will suffer the most from it is you.

You have the capacity to be an inspiring leader regardless of what role you play...an inspiration to others while giving your greatest gift.  Your gift may not be the same as those around you (so drop all comparison!)…your gift is unique & can only be expressed by you.

Have a wonderful holiday—may those of you who choose to be inspired share bliss and joy with everyone around you.  Email me & share your reflections with me in your 48-day journey.  I’ll be thinking of you with love and inspiration as we enter the New Year!

In the spirit of ASHP Midyear meeting coming up, some of you are sure to be interviewing there (or maybe being the interviewer). Here are some surefire ways to make a potential pharmacy employer yawn in an interview:

1.  Tell them what you’ve done and never talk about the reasons why it would benefit them. A lot of pharmacists are really good at doing this.  They describe their job responsibilities….and then end there.  The average pharmacy job seeker describes their experience in a typical way & expects that the employer will think they walk on water, because they do the same things as everyone else who has similar experience.

If you want to stand out from your competition, go one step further.  Describe what that would mean for the employer. For example, if you’re a pharmacy manager, instead of saying “I manage 14 pharmacists”, say:

“I manage 14 pharmacists and have built a loyal pharmacy staff with the highest retention the pharmacy has seen in the last 10 yrs during my employment there.”

To impress the employer even more, take it a step further & describe the reasons why doing what you did would benefit them:

“I manage 14 pharmacists and have built a loyal pharmacy staff that has seen the highest retention in the last 10 yrs, saving my current employer over $XXX/yr in turnover costs.”

——————-
If you’re a clinical coordinator, instead of just listing your job responsibilities”:  ”I have been a clinical coordinator for 7 years.  I’ve been involved with rounding, developing clinical protocols, & medication safety initiatives”,

describe your accomplishments in a nutshell right away: “…..I’ve been involved with medication safety initiatives that have reduced medication errors each year by XX%.  I’ve also helped establish a residency program.”

& describe the reasons why doing what you did would benefit them: ”….made the pharmacy department look good by reducing medication errors each year by X%” and “increased the amount of visibility & interest pharmacists had in our institution from establishing a residency program”.  Are you starting to see the power in that?  Change this one thing about the way you interview, and you will leave impressing the interviewer and increase your chances for getting a job you want, vs. someone else who didn’t know better.

——————–

Are you starting to see the power in that?  Change this one thing about the way you interview, and you will leave impressing the interviewer and increase your chances for getting a job you want, vs. someone else who didn’t know better.

2.  Say trite things that other pharmacist job applicants will most likely say. Tell them how you work well with others and that you are hard working.  Be like a broken record that a pharmacy director or hiring manager will have likely heard a million times before.  You can bet that your interviewer will tune out when you say trite things.

Instead, try to describe yourself in a way that relates to the job you will be doing.  Perhaps you could describe your strengths in being a creative thinker who likes to explore alternative solutions to solve problems.  Here’s the key: Back it up with an example, or a story.  When a potential employer hears a story of you doing the great things you’ve done, they can relate to it.  They can think about how that situation can apply to their needs.

3. When asked by your interviewer, “Do you have any questions?”, you say, “No, you went over everything.” Hmm..boring.  Non-creative person.  Probably not really that interested in the job to even have any questions! Hiring managers want to know that you are just as invested in choosing the right job as they are in choosing the right candidate.  By saying that you have no questions about the position, you raise a red flag about your level of interest.  Have some sincere questions ready for when you are asked, such as:

“What are the qualities of people who are very successful in your pharmacy?” (Use this to respond with the similar qualities you have)

“Can you tell me a bit about the long-term advancement opportunities at this hospital?” (This shows your interest in long-term growth and not just “a job”)

“What projects/initiatives are being implemented that I will have a part in if I am accepted for the job?”

The interviewer will be impressed by the questions you ask, and he or she can learn a lot about you by what you bring up during the interview.

Use these valuable strategies in your next interview–stop boring your potential employer(s), keep their eyes wide open & get the job!

Comment below on what you learned from these strategies & what mistakes you’ve made in the past but now you’ve realized.  If you have been an interviewer before, comment on how frequently you hear boring things from pharmacist applicants.

If you’re going to ASHP Midyear, email me–I’m gifting mini resume and interview assessments to PGY2 pharmacy residents and hospital-experienced pharmacists in my community (everything’s confidential).   Apply here for limited available spots. Or if you just want to meet up, email me.  Have a good recruiter know you personally and they’ll put more attention on looking out for opportunities for you.

The #1 communication method that causes misunderstandings in pharmacies is….

You voted & the results are in from last month’s poll of pharmacy residency directors and pharmacy managers. The most popular answer was email.  Face-to-face communication is currently in 2nd place.  Do you agree?

What method of communication has caused you the most misunderstandings? If you haven’t voted yet, vote here & see the latest tally so your input is counted.

Tired of emails causing you frustrations with miscommunication? Here are 7 ways to prevent this issue from happening, including when & when not to use email.

1. Write a summary of the content or the request you have in the subject of the email. I started doing this regularly when my straightforward best friend from pharmacy school (she’s a clinical inpatient pharmacist & is now working at the FDA) asked me to start being specific in every subject title of emails to her, even personal ones.  I suppose she had a lot of emails to go through at the time & now I understand the value of it even more, now that I get hundreds of emails every day.

• Bonus Tip: Put the level of importance of your task request in the subject heading of the email, example: IMPORTANT: Send me XXX today

2. End the first paragraph of each email with an overview of the rest of the email, or an action step request (with deadline).  End the last paragraph with a summary of how to move forward, by when, and how.

3. Request confirmation and understanding of your email.  This is important when you are wanting someone to do something for you, or you want to make sure someone understood you clearly.  Sometimes confirmation of understanding your email is best to do on the phone, rather than back & forth questions that may develop as a result of questions about your email.

4. Don’t be afraid of the phone.  Let’s face it.  We’ve all done it—trying to avoid an uncomfortable conversation or the elephant in the room by emailing someone.  And then it just gets worse, because your email gets interpreted differently than you intended.  Then the receiver takes time fuming over your email, crafting just the perfect thing to say in response.  All that energy wasted and leading to both of you feeling frustrated than if you just both got on the phone.  Imagine that!  Some things are better to talk about in person, including new items that might require discussion.  Get on the phone.

5. The best times to use email to communication are when you want to share updates (preferably in bullet points) or make quick announcements that you may wish to have forwarded.  Email is also useful for notating policy changes and summarizing mutual understanding about a conversation you’ve had with someone and how to move forward.  If you are initiating a policy change, have the receiver verbalize their understanding of what you’d like them to do on the phone.

6. Find out the preference of the people you work with closely—do they prefer one long email with many points, or a separate email for each task/topic?  Of course, you can’t cater to everyone, but short typically better for everyone’s busy lives.

7. Is CC or BCC better?

• Use Cc (or carbon copy) field for people you want to know about the message, but are not directly involved. It’s for people that do not need to act or reply to the message, but to keep them informed.  But they can if they want to.
  • Mention in the email that you are CCing someone on an email
• The Bcc field (Blind Carbon Copy) can be used when you want other people to receive the message, but you don’t want the other recipients to know they got it.
  • The benefit of using BCC instead of CC is that if a person hits “reply all” it won’t go to everyone

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Co-mmuni-cat-ion.  Com-munic-at-ion. I started having a good look at my own communication issues recently when I was feeling frustrated with things falling through the cracks in my pharmacist recruiting business.  Some things I envisioned being done a certain way ended up being done a different way.  Recently, an email I sent to a team member about a request was interpreted in a different way than I intended & it got us both extremely frustrated.  My communication challenges were driving me nuts.  There’s nothing I hate more than things impacting the level of service that pharmacists need attention to with their job search.

I was determined to figure out how to solve the challenges I was having. Looking into it, I noticed that sometimes, things I clearly stated one way were being interpreted in another.  Then there were times when things I unclearly said were unclearly getting interpreted (imagine that!).  If I got lucky, sometimes people read my mind just fine.

I tried to figure out how I could solve the problem, and while doing so, I stayed up all night reading about communication one night.  Here are some straight no BS tips I learned (and from my personal experiences) that you can use in your pharmacy/department:

1. Don’t be hard on yourself or on the other person when a communication breakdown happens and you’re frustrated. Realize that communication issues happen when the steps that contribute to communication are skipped.  Also, people interpret you from their own “world”, and even if you communicate clearly and they seem to understand exactly as you said, there is still a chance for miscommunication to happen.  Take a step back and evaluate what you may have contributed to the issue.

2. Communication = someone expressing themselves + someone interpreting that expression. Happiness for communicator= someone communicating + being understood the way they want.  Happiness for recipient= Receiving what was being said + having the info with as little judgment as possible +a way to respond and express their understanding.

3. No BS lessons/tips to make life easier:

• Ask for confirmation of what the receiving person heard. Or, if it doesn’t feel right to do that (because obviously it would be awkward to be asking someone to repeat or rephrase what you said every time you say something), then summarize yourself what you’ve communicated & ask for a commitment for the next action step you’re looking for by a certain time frame.
• Don’t judge what someone says to you. Instead, just receive the communication fully.  You can do this by reflecting back to them what they shared with you, but without agreeing or disagreeing.  People always want to be heard when they communicate. This is something that can be easier said than done.  A habit that can be developed over time is to agree or disagree with someone’s communication.
• When possible, especially with easily misunderstood things, communicate in person. The next best thing would be phone, & then email.  When you notice frustration happening, get on the phone to discuss.  I know someone who is a warm, effective communicator on the phone, but whose emails come across as abrupt and frequently annoyed.  But when you get on the phone with her, you don’t get that sense at all.
• Give feedback so someone realizes what you are thinking. Don’t let miscommunication continue to happen until one or both parties give up and decide not to communicate effectively with each other.
• When someone snaps at you, it’s not really about you. It’s about their interpretation of you (expressed from “their world”) & expectations of you that is showing up in a reaction.  Find out the cause of frustration, find common ground and the direction you want to go, and solve it together.

How much of a role does communication challenges play in the frustrations of your pharmacy staff or HR department?  And what no BS tip can you choose to have your staff reflect on for this week or this month?  Allow them to reflect, implement it, and come back during your next meeting to share their experience with it.

Reflect on one tip this week & come back here at end of the month to share what it does for your team.

For now, give advice on how to overcome pharmacy communication issues with your pharmacy colleagues below:

Chen, I cannot work on Saturdays for religious reasons.  I offer to work every Sunday and every legal holiday.  As soon as the employer hears this they are no longer interested in offering me the job.  I do not want to mislead the employer by not saying anything about the scheduling issue. For this reason I am forced to think about retraining in a different profession.  I would much rather stay in pharmacy.  Have you any suggestions how I can handle the scheduling issue?

Answer:  Two things come to mind.

1) How is your timing– when do you tell a potential employer that you cannot work Saturdays?  And how are you expressing it?  Without knowing when in the process you pop your schedule requirements, consider when in the process you would tell a potential employer.  Is it after they are attracted to how well you would do the job & may be a fit for the company, or is it early on in a first conversation when they hardly know you?  This is a great example of where you want to liken a job search to dating.  Would you tell someone that you have a requirement that you can’t hang out with them on Saturdays for the rest of their life when you first meet them?  I can think of one pharmacist I helped recently whom an employer just loved and was willing to accommodate the schedule she requested.

It seems like you are open to accommodate working on any other day of the week.  Perhaps you could propose an alternative.  Start with the benefit first, ie: “I would be happy to cover every Sunday and holiday.  I have personal commitments where I am unable to work on Saturdays.  Would that be something we can work out?”  You don’t need to bring your specific personal reasons into the conversation & mention religion, unless you really feel compelled.

2) It is important not to mislead the employer.  So, if you know upfront that it is a position that requires Saturdays, and after some fact-finding,  you find out the reason for this requirement is because no one else can cover it currently (or that your working on Sundays or holidays does the place no good, because they aren’t even open on Sundays or holidays) & you know for sure the pharmacy would not accommodate, then look for pharmacist jobs that do not require Saturdays.  There are definitely such positions out there.

Without knowing more about your experience and what you desire, perhaps you need to make concession with the type of setting & geographic location you will accept working in.  Check out some of the jobs we are connected with and see if any suit your needs.  We don’t advertise everything, so feel free to connect with us directly.   Good luck to you!

The last few years have been tough for many pharmacists who found themselves in transition to another job. It was more time consuming to find the right pharmacy position, and sometimes extremely frustrating.  Pharmacists went from being spoiled by being frequently called by recruiters about positions, to wondering when the next time a position in their desired role would become available in their preferred geographic area.

Our profession went from being one of the most job secure positions to one that was subject to uncertainty.  Uncertainty of budget cuts, layoffs, overall direction of the pharmacy, and lots of overworked pharmacists was the theme of the last few years.

Here’s the answer to the question many of you have been asking me about.  What direction do I see the pharmacy job market going? What kind of jobs are hot?

Clinical coordinators and overnight shift 7 on/7 off pharmacists (especially in the inpatient pharmacy setting) are in high demand. Specialty areas such as pharmacy informatics, pediatric pharmacist, infectious disease pharmacist, and oncology pharmacist positions are still hot.

If you are planning ahead & deciding whether to do a PGY2 residency, the areas of pediatric infectious disease and pediatric oncology pharmacy seem to be new emerging specialty areas of demand. Also, there aren’t enough pharmacy informatics residency programs to meet the demand for the increasing need for informatics/pharmacy automation pharmacists.  Good field to get into.

Remote order entry pharmacists continue to be increasing in demand, where inpatient experienced pharmacists process/fill orders for hospitals off-site.  This is a cost-saving measure and a growing area of pharmacy.  The majority of these remote order entry positions are still on-site, but there are remote order entry positions where you can work from home also.

I have noticed that new grads are having a harder time finding the right pharmacist position this year than even last year. There are more pharmacists out there looking for work than in the past, and competition is fierce.  For new grads, retail pharmacist positions are still the easiest to get into.  Getting into an inpatient pharmacist position as a new grad, for example, is tough in saturated pharmacy job markets.

One thing I’ve noticed is that new grads are more realistic than they used to be. Sorry, new grads, but your nickname in the recruiting world used to be “divas”.  I used to talk frequently to new grads who expected clinical pharmacist positions without experience or a pharmacy practice residency.  But now, they come to me having a clearer idea of what they are truly qualified for.

For experienced pharmacists who are job hunting, finding the right job quickly is all about marketing yourself well.  I have noticed a higher percentage of experienced pharmacists who are not finding the position they want.  And it’s not because they’re not qualified.  It’s because they don’t know how to market themselves well.  If you’re like most pharmacists, you didn’t go to pharmacy school to learn about marketing.  In fact, you probably cringe at hearing the word “sales”.

Getting the right job quickly in this market is all about tapping into the hidden job market & getting noticed.  If you want someone to be networking on your behalf for unadvertised jobs, find a recruiter you resonate with to keep their eyes open for you.  In this tough job market, you have to be an experienced pharmacist with strong work history (aka no job hopping) in order for a recruiter to represent you.  Otherwise, learn about how to stand out in this competitive market.  Start here with the first step to marketing yourself well.

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