Hiring Pharmacists: Is Experienced or Inexperienced Better?

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Should you hire an inexperienced or experienced pharmacist?
Sounds like an obvious question, doesn’t it?

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.

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.