10+ Pharmacy Technician Resume Skills & Samples

Before making your pharmacy technician resume, it is important to first understand the difference between the job responsibilities of a pharmacy technician and those of a pharmacy assistant. 

In a nutshell, a pharmacy assistant performs more administrative duties such as answering phone calls or stocking the shelves in pharmacy retails. Pharmacy technician’s duties, on the other hand, would include more clinical tasks such as calculating prescription dosages and processing customers’ orders.

A pharmacy technician’s resume should reflect that difference. The skills to put on resume for pharmacy technicians usually include, but not limited to the following: 

• Pharmaceutical calculations
• Pharmaceutical terminology and safety
• Prescription processing
• Insurance claims processing
• Customer service

Glassdoor’s statistics stated that out of the average of 250 applicants for a job position, only ONE of them will be hired. Furthermore, considering that the recruiter spends 6 seconds on each resume on average, it is crucial for pharmacy technicians to be clear about which pharmacy technician resume skills to highlight. It is also helpful to refer to various pharmacy technician resume examples to increase the chance of being seen in the highly competitive industry.

There are 3 basic resume formats: chronological, functional and combinational format. Each has its own pros and cons, so choose the format that you think better reflects your experience, credibilities and expertise. For example, a senior pharmacy technician resume would benefit more from one format, whereas a pharmacy technician trainee resume would look better in another format.

✨ 3 common resume formats

1. Chronological resume format

Chronological, or usually called “reverse-chronological” format displays your past experiences in a reverse chronological order, with the most recent roles at the top, and the oldest one at the bottom. This format could be used for a senior pharmacy technician resume as there are usually sufficient work experiences to be shown.

2. Functional resume format

This resume format categorizes work experience and any other activities into different skills as subheadings. Recruiters would know at a glance what your top skills are without knowing your complete work history. If you are creating a pharmacy technician resume with no experience to add, this format would be highly recommended.

3. Combinational resume format

Combinational (or “hybrid”) format, as the name suggests, is a resume format that combines the chronological and functional format. It contains a reverse-chronological work history, and a skills summary section.

✨ In which format should a pharmacy technician resume be sent?

The most common formats of resume are Word formats and PDF formats. While they have their own pros and cons, if not specified in the job posting, always send your pharmacy technician resume in PDF.

PDF files

Word formats

✨ How to prepare a resume format for freshers?

• Advice 1: Use a skill-based (functional) resume format

Categorize your past achievements and activities under skills required to the position. In terms of pharmacy technician resume skills, a fresher can connect his/her blood drive volunteer experience with quick problem solving skills required in the pharmacy technician resume, for example.

• Advice 2: Write a career objective statement

It is helpful to include a career objective statement or resume objective for pharmacy technicians. With even no experience, letting the recruiters know your career goal could help them understand better whether or not your goal matches the role.

• Advice 3: Highlight your educational qualifications

If you have related courseworks, list them in the education section in your resume. In the case of a pharmacy technician resume, related educational awards or training certifications will certainly help in increasing your credibility as a candidate.

🖋 Resume header

The uppermost part of the resume that includes your personal details and contact information. As it acts like a name card to the recruiter, you should include them in your pharmacy technician resume.

🖋 Resume title

Also commonly called as profile title or resume headline, resume title is a short self introduction line that summarizes who you are, and helps recruiters understand your personality and experience at a first glance. Therefore, make sure to create a concise, but eye-catching one for your pharmacy technician resume.

🖋 Resume summary

Resume summary is the one short section where you summarize your whole pharmacy technician resume. As this section is located right after your resume header, it is the first thing recruiters see, and is therefore crucial to determine whether or not they will read on. A sample pharmacy technician resume objective is as follows.

🖋 Resume objective

Although optional, a resume objective is a statement of your career goal, sometimes followed with explanations of up to 3 sentences. This aids the company in getting a snapshot at your expectations of yourself and the company, in a more narrative way. An example career objective for pharmacy technician is as follows.

🖋 Skills

Not only to a pharmacy technician, resume skills are arguably the core part of any resume. Paying attention to the required skills in the job description and matching yours is key to getting a chance for an interview. A pharmacy tech’s resume skills section could look like this snippet from a pharmacy technician resume sample.

🖋 Work experience

Just like the skills section, unless you’re a fresher, it is highly recommended to include relevant work experience in your resume. Below is an example from the same retail pharmacy technician resume.

🖋 Education

This section is particularly important for freshers, as work experience is usually still insufficient. Highlighting your academic related results or achievements also signal to the recruiters that you are someone who is willing to put in effort when it matters.

🖋 Additional information 

Taking a retail pharmacy technician resume as an example, a college degree might not even be required to apply to be a pharmacy technician. In this case, you can go on to MOOCs (Massive open online courses) platforms to take online courses provided by prestigious universities and earn the completion certificates. This can be added into your ‘certificates’ section that delivers a strong message to recruiters that you are self-driven. 

✅ Tailor the resume to the job description.

This is the most important part any job applicant should not skip. Taking a hospital pharmacy technician resume for an example, if MEDITECH software is needed and you don’t list it on your resume when you have the skills, you lose a chance of moving onto the interview stage. Sometimes, ATS scanners also find keywords related to the job description, so be sure to do your research before starting your resume writing.

✅ Make it concise and relevant to the job.

A senior pharmacy technician’s resume might contain too many experiences, but please keep in mind that recruiters might read up to hundreds of resumes a day, and keeping it shorter by only including the relevant ones will help the recruiters’ eyes, and your chance in getting hired.

✅ Refer to online resume examples.

This is a good method, especially if you’re a fresher. Look up pharmacy tech resume examples and get inspiration from them, especially what power verbs to use. Just remember to not get carried away and copy too much! 

​​✅ Keep the formatting consistent (styles, colors, font, and etc.).

One of the most common problems for resume first-timers is formatting. Not only do you have to think about ATS-friendly fonts and styles, it should also be clean, professional and pleasant-to-read by a human recruiter to avoid being thrown into the “bye-bye” pile.

✅ Do research about the type of pharmacy technician you’re aiming for.

Keep in mind to do thorough research as even though they all still fall under the pharmacy technician, the skills to put on resumes for pharmacy technicians in different fields might be very different. For example, in a retail pharmacy technician resume, ability to interact with customers should be highlighted, and a CVS pharmacy technician’s resume could require another set of hard skills.

❓ Should I use a resume template?

Yes, absolutely. Resume templates are created to help you build a professional-looking resume that can easily be processed by ATS systems. In addition, resume templates also help you save time, as you don’t have to start from a blank Word page like you usually do.

There are, however, some minor downsides of using a resume template. Low to no customization is allowed, meaning that 5 sections of the template HAVE to be filled in no matter what. Other than that, generic designs mean there could be lookalikes showing up in the same stack of resumes. These could, however, be prevented by choosing a customisable resume template and changing the color, fonts, etc. whenever possible.

❓ Where can I get a free resume template?

• CakeResume provides ATS-compliant, fully customisable and exportable resume templates. You can also choose from a wide range of modern and up-to-date resume designs for a more eye-catching resume.
• Microsoft Word provides resume templates and is also a good choice if you’re fine with basic designs and have more confidence in your format editing skills.

--- Originally written by Evelyn Peng ---