Chilling new message from a pharmacy podcast

[steveysmith54]

Notion that one may need to work in the service industry, banks, food industry, "any job" to "prepare" for a pharmacy job.

Doctorate degree, residency training, etc to be considered just a "college graduate,". WOW

Maybe even more disheartening are the hopes that immunizations will rescue this profession.

Hope this is a wake up call and a reality check.

I hope that I didn't misconstrue what Tony is saying, but this is really sad for me to hear.

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[deleted562805]

Notion that one may need to work in the service industry, banks, food industry, "any job" to "prepare" for a pharmacy job.

Doctorate degree, residency training, etc to be considered just a "college graduate,". WOW

Maybe even more disheartening are the hopes that immunizations will rescue this profession.

Hope this is a wake up call and a reality check.

I hope that I didn't misconstrue what Tony is saying, but this is really sad for me to hear.

Dang. This is sad. But I think he is wrong that all health care providers are not needed. But I guess he was just referring to new grads and pharmacy residents. Obviously, physicians, nurses, PAs and NPs are needed. The graduates from those programs have nothing to worry about

 

[Gombrich12]

10 years of school/training and you're going to work at a bank? Is this guy an academic? Seems like he isn't holding a certain group of people accountable for the destroyed job market.

 

[wagrxm2000]

25k subscribers and he gets a couple hundred views per video.

At what point do you give up on YouTube?

 

[WVUPharm2007]

Residency won't save you. It might have for a litle while. But we are reaching residency trained pharmacist saturation, too.

Residency is and always has been a scheme in which institutions colluded together to shift the cost of on the job training to the employee.

 

[VA77]

How many PA,NP,MD,DO or nurses are having to go into other 'industries' after spending years in grad school. If this is the message being sent after grad school is to 'get any job' then why waste the money in the first place. You can get this 'experience' at any time during school. This isn't the pandemic or recession's fault but a failure on ACPE not regulating the class size of new schools which they CAN do. Greg and Jan, DO YOUR DAMN JOB!

I would stand on the street with a pharmacy sign asking for work before taking another job so at least I could use my education and 'passion'

 

[WVUPharm2007]

The guy does have a point, though. Getting real experience does help you in ways you don't really consider. I feel like I can excel in managing just about any retail environment after being at CVS for a decade. It'd be like a hardened Afghanistan War veteran taking a job as a security guard in a crime free suburban town.

I can just see the interview now.

"It's a VERY high stress environment, do you think you can handle it?"
"Is there a phone that screams in a high volume "ONE STORE CALL" over and over again until you pick it up? No matter how busy you are with in-store customers?"
"Um...no."
"Is there a drive thru, register, and drop off I have to man simultaneously by myself?"
"Uh...we don't have a drop off at Kin..."
"Will heroin addicts show up at 2AM with a fake prescription for oxycodone and threaten to stab me if I don't give it to them?"
"..."

 

[steveysmith54]

I think what is frightening is back in the day, students were told you can always find a pharmacy job if you're willing to move to a rural area/less desirable area; this is a completely different message that I've never heard before.

 

[deleted562805]

The guy does have a point, though. Getting real experience does help you in ways you don't really consider. I feel like I can excel in managing just about any retail environment after being at CVS for a decade. It'd be like a hardened Afghanistan War veteran taking a job as a security guard in a crime free suburban town.

I can just see the interview now.

"It's a VERY high stress environment, do you think you can handle it?"
"Is there a phone that screams in a high volume "ONE STORE CALL" over and over again until you pick it up? No matter how busy you are with in-store customers?"
"Um...no."
"Is there a drive thru, register, and drop off I have to man simultaneously by myself?"
"Uh...we don't have a drop off at Kin..."
"Will heroin addicts show up at 2AM with a fake prescription for oxycodone and threaten to stab me if I don't give it to them?"
"..."

True. Taco Bell Manager would be a piece of cake after working for CVS.

 

[deleted562805]

I think what is frightening is back in the day, students were told you can always find a pharmacy job if you're willing to move to a rural area/less desirable area; this is a completely different message that I've never heard before.

Based on Tony PharmD’s statements, Pharmacy is officially the law school of health care, where folks with PharmDs, PGY-2s/BCPS AQ-ID s are flipping burgers at McD’s. This is due to Failure of ACPE not regulating schools!

 

[Deja]

this guy is an idiot

from the looks of it, he's in academic, he probably haven't applied for a pharmacy job since he graduated

 

[Momus]

25k subscribers and he gets a couple hundred views per video.

At what point do you give up on YouTube?

The money isn't on YouTube for him. He probably upload his podcast somewhere else and get paid there better than YouTube. YouTube is just another place for him to upload his talk. All Podcasters do this.

 

[PharmDBro2017]

Why the hate on him for speaking his mind and putting it on youtube, or viewer count stats, etc.

Don't watch/listen if you're going to BMW.

 

[deleted562805]

this guy is an idiot

from the looks of it, he's in academic, he probably haven't applied for a pharmacy job since he graduated

True he is an academic, but he has nothing to gain by spreading this message and is speaking some truth on this podcast. He works for a community college, not pharmacy school.

 

[jacksmith228833]

Residency won't save you. It might have for a litle while. But we are reaching residency trained pharmacist saturation, too.

Residency is and always has been a scheme in which institutions colluded together to shift the cost of on the job training to the employee.

In my experience , residency trained pharmacists are like people who have a masters degree in comparative lit: arrogant, entitled and mad at the world that does not recognize their "genius".

Most residencies are, yes, low wage programs and not very educational; basically one is the b&*^*-pharmacist oncall during the night and doing the stuff no one wants to do.

Most are damaged goods; give me a smart dedicated always-learning pharmacist without a residency any day

 

[sfachine]

Just because someone invests a little time in a you tube video or pod cast does not grant them a higher degree of insight than anyone else.

 

[gwarm01]

Hospitals won't take a second glance at you if you spend a year working in retail, and this guy is telling residency trained graduates to work for a bank?

 

[deleted562805]

Hospitals won't take a second glance at you if you spend a year working in retail, and this guy is telling residency trained graduates to work for a bank?

I mean there was a resident poster on here is now working for Dairy Queen...so maybe he is dropping some truth.
And retail won’t take a second look at a resident trained pharmacist who has no hospital job lined up trying to go back to reapply to retail pharmacy jobs.

 

[gwarm01]

I mean there was a resident poster on here is now working for Dairy Queen...so maybe he is dropping some truth.
And retail won’t take a second look at a resident trained pharmacist who has no hospital job lined up trying to go back to reapply to retail pharmacy jobs.

This is just my personal opinion, but anyone who can hand dip a chocolate covered cone could also handle sterile prep in the IV room. That's a transferable skill.

 

[steveysmith54]

I actually think he means well, from what I gather he is not a pharmacy school professor, teaches at a community college, and didn't do a residency himself. Just a very sad state of affairs in our profession if that's what is coming down to.

 

[deleted562805]

I actually think he means well, from what I gather he is not a pharmacy school professor, teaches at a community college, and didn't do a residency himself. Just a very sad state of affairs in our profession if that's what is coming down to.

He mentioned about getting leadership positions in non pharmacy jobs as a resident to make themselves competitive.Those leadership positions or manager positions in food or service industry are not going to fall on your lap if you are a resident trained pharmacist. You need like 5-7 years experience in those fields

Hypothetical scenario: So after 5 years experience of working in Taco Bell making tacos and 2 extra years as a manager of Tacobell store and I decide to reapply for a full time hospital pharmacist, in which I will more likely get a full time hospital job, even though I am 7 years removed from pharmacy. That makes no sense. Sure, my leadership skills will be on point, but I will loose my clinical skills after 7 years removed from a hospital. Might as well become a franchise owner of Taco Bell at that point.

 

[deleted562805]

I actually think he means well, from what I gather he is not a pharmacy school professor, teaches at a community college, and didn't do a residency himself. Just a very sad state of affairs in our profession if that's what is coming down to.

I believe he said he did do a residency and went into teaching at a community college. His wife also did a residency is still working at grocery store retail chain where she interned during pharmacy school. They both finished residency in 2009.

 

[deleted562805]

In my experience , residency trained pharmacists are like people who have a masters degree in comparative lit: arrogant, entitled and mad at the world that does not recognize their "genius".

Most residencies are, yes, low wage programs and not very educational; basically one is the b&*^*-pharmacist oncall during the night and doing the stuff no one wants to do.

Most are damaged goods; give me a smart dedicated always-learning pharmacist without a residency any day

Well, it is due to all that brainwashing from school that resident pharmacists are “front line health care providers triaging patients,” “are the leading drug experts who Doctors ask for advice,” “ are a vital/integral part of the health care team on grand rounds” Schools need to be held responsible too for telling a lie to students.

 

[Argentium]

Largely agree with a lot of what this guy says -- he says get any experience (preferably something tangentially related to what you want to do) and then spin it during an interview.

I'll tell you that I'll hire someone who has hustled in the last year after graduating (even if its not in the perfect post-grad job) and has a good story to tell over the crybabies on this forum who didn't work a day in their life throughout 4+4 years of school and then stayed unemployed for a year after getting their license ..

Interviewer: What did you do in the last year?

• Customer service job: This was a humbling experience. I built up my customer service skills and was able to defuse stressful situations during an unprecedented pandemic. Because I come from a healthcare background, I stepped up and took a leadership role in terms of the public health aspect of opening up my store and made sure we were compliant with local, state, and national guidelines. This was viewed as a best practice and all the stores in my region adopted the guidelines that I put in place. I learned how to deal with stressful interactions with customers, a fast-paced and ever-changing environment, and how to meet and exceed goals placed by management despite an imperfect situation
  
  
• Unemployed grad 1-year after licensure who has done nothing: bUT dA SAtURAtION

Edit: Sure there are a lot of bad actors in the pharmacy saturation, but blaming others is not going to help your personal situation

 

[Saiyo]

Reminds me of posts from that girl that had been working as a tech for years.......
Would you hire a pharmacist that spent a year working as a pharmacy tech or a fresh grad?
Talking about how you managed employees at mcdonalds sounds so desperate, so I would say if you can't find any pharmacist jobs try get into something health-related at least.

 

[Deja]

He mentioned about getting leadership positions in non pharmacy jobs as a resident to make themselves competitive.Those leadership positions or manager positions in food or service industry are not going to fall on your lap if you are a resident trained pharmacist. You need like 5-7 years experience in those fields

Hypothetical scenario: So after 5 years experience of working in Taco Bell making tacos and 2 extra years as a manager of Tacobell store and I decide to reapply for a full time hospital pharmacist, in which I will more likely get a full time hospital job, even though I am 7 years removed from pharmacy. That makes no sense. Sure, my leadership skills will be on point, but I will loose my clinical skills after 7 years removed from a hospital. Might as well become a franchise owner of Taco Bell at that point.

you are flip flopping more than a politician I can't tell if you agree with the video or disagrees

 

[PharmtoCS]

At this point, TBH you're probably most likely to land a pharmacist job if you get your foot in the door as a cashier at one of the big box retailers and work your way up learning all the customer service, leadership, conflict management, etc. skills. If you prove yourself then you're more likely to get first dibs on any floater pharmacist position that opens up.

 

[deleted562805]

you are flip flopping more than a politician I can't tell if you agree with the video or disagrees

I disagree with him that a leadership experience in a non-pharmacy job can help you get a clinical pharmacist job. It cannot. Because acquiring those positions takes years of experience and by that time one will be far removed from pharmacy.

However, I agree with the video that if you cannot find a job in pharmacy, find a job period, instead of waiting for a pharmacy job after 1 year of unemployment. This is a backhanded way of saying cut your losses and move on. But podcaster does not want to tell you that because he would loose viewers and subscribers. He wants to spread some hope to residents.

This video is portraying loss scenario on both sides. Residency is supposed to make you competitive for a hospital job, except we have a saturation of residents. So now residency is not considered job experience.

Well, you find a non pharmacy job, you become a manager in a non pharmacist job. You still pose a risk to a hospital pharmacy department because you are far away from line of work as a hospital pharmacist.

It is such a shame that this is the new message for new grads of pharmacy and pharmacy residents

 

[steveysmith54]

I don't even think it's about whether or not you agree with his points, in fact, it's hard to argue against looking for some kind of employment; to me it's rather sad what once such a promising profession has turned into.

 

[Wickett]

The guy does have a point, though. Getting real experience does help you in ways you don't really consider. I feel like I can excel in managing just about any retail environment after being at CVS for a decade. It'd be like a hardened Afghanistan War veteran taking a job as a security guard in a crime free suburban town.

I can just see the interview now.

"It's a VERY high stress environment, do you think you can handle it?"
"Is there a phone that screams in a high volume "ONE STORE CALL" over and over again until you pick it up? No matter how busy you are with in-store customers?"
"Um...no."
"Is there a drive thru, register, and drop off I have to man simultaneously by myself?"
"Uh...we don't have a drop off at Kin..."
"Will heroin addicts show up at 2AM with a fake prescription for oxycodone and threaten to stab me if I don't give it to them?"
"..."

Yup. Before pharmacy school, I oversaw a daycare for a year. Managing underpaid day care teachers on top of dealing with hysterical moms prepared me for being PIC straight out of school and dealing with underpaid techs and hysterical moms.

 

[owlegrad]

The guy does have a point, though. Getting real experience does help you in ways you don't really consider. I feel like I can excel in managing just about any retail environment after being at CVS for a decade. It'd be like a hardened Afghanistan War veteran taking a job as a security guard in a crime free suburban town.

I can just see the interview now.

"It's a VERY high stress environment, do you think you can handle it?"
"Is there a phone that screams in a high volume "ONE STORE CALL" over and over again until you pick it up? No matter how busy you are with in-store customers?"
"Um...no."
"Is there a drive thru, register, and drop off I have to man simultaneously by myself?"
"Uh...we don't have a drop off at Kin..."
"Will heroin addicts show up at 2AM with a fake prescription for oxycodone and threaten to stab me if I don't give it to them?"
"..."

This is true. I cannot even explain to you the culture shock of going from CVS to LTC. People act like having to answer the phone is just unbearable. It’s like try imagining having to answer the phone while you have a car honking its horn in drive through and customers banging on the counter.

 

[SELDANE]

The guy does bring up a great point. I got into pharmacy school in the early 90's without a PCAT and having been absent from school for 3 years. We spent the entire interview discussing why I dropped out of college and joined the Army.

 

[BidingMyTime]

When looking for a new job, it is always going to look better to have any job, rather than no job. But the longer one is away from a career field, and the more the current job is away from that career job, the less likely the person will get a job in that career field.

So if the choice is between A) 2 year unemployed pharmacist and B) 4 year unemployed pharmacist working as McDonald's manager.....well,it's the McDonald's manager who will be hired.

But realistically, this isn't going to be the scenario. The scenario will actually be A) 2 year unemployed pharmacist and B) 4 year unemployed pharmacist working as McDonald's manager c)unemployed pharmacist who just graduated 2 months ago.....and it's going to be the pharmacist who just graduated who will be hired.

So yes, he is right to tell people to get a job, any job. But if he's honest he will admit they probably aren't going back into the pharmacy field.

 

[mentos]

Hospitals won't take a second glance at you if you spend a year working in retail, and this guy is telling residency trained graduates to work for a bank?

We've had unemployed PharmDs here post that they are working for Uber and delivering pizzas. You gotta pay the bills...

 

[KidPharmD]

25k subscribers and he gets a couple hundred views per video.

At what point do you give up on YouTube?

He used to post a very different type of video that probably earned him his subscribers.

When looking for a new job, it is always going to look better to have any job, rather than no job. But the longer one is away from a career field, and the more the current job is away from that career job, the less likely the person will get a job in that career field.

So if the choice is between A) 2 year unemployed pharmacist and B) 4 year unemployed pharmacist working as McDonald's manager.....well,it's the McDonald's manager who will be hired.

But realistically, this isn't going to be the scenario. The scenario will actually be A) 2 year unemployed pharmacist and B) 4 year unemployed pharmacist working as McDonald's manager c)unemployed pharmacist who just graduated 2 months ago.....and it's going to be the pharmacist who just graduated who will be hired.

So yes, he is right to tell people to get a job, any job. But if he's honest he will admit they probably aren't going back into the pharmacy field.

The likely scenario is that there will also be a PGY1 graduate applying for that job and they will get it.

 

[Marzapan]

When looking for a new job, it is always going to look better to have any job, rather than no job. But the longer one is away from a career field, and the more the current job is away from that career job, the less likely the person will get a job in that career field.

So if the choice is between A) 2 year unemployed pharmacist and B) 4 year unemployed pharmacist working as McDonald's manager.....well,it's the McDonald's manager who will be hired.

But realistically, this isn't going to be the scenario. The scenario will actually be A) 2 year unemployed pharmacist and B) 4 year unemployed pharmacist working as McDonald's manager c)unemployed pharmacist who just graduated 2 months ago.....and it's going to be the pharmacist who just graduated who will be hired.

So yes, he is right to tell people to get a job, any job. But if he's honest he will admit they probably aren't going back into the pharmacy field.

D) 5000+ new PGY-1/2 grads who have no "clinical" jobs to apply to and are applying to anything and everything - these people will get the job.

Pharmacy is in a state where there are enough pharmacists with relevant experience that desperation hires (aka A, B and most of the time C) do not exist anymore. It's just that competitive.

 

[deleted562805]

D) 5000+ new PGY-1/2 grads who have no "clinical" jobs to apply to and are applying to anything and everything - these people will get the job.

Pharmacy is in a state where there are enough pharmacists with relevant experience that desperation hires (aka A, B and most of the time C) do not exist anymore. It's just that competitive.

Will a PGY1/PGY-2 with no retail experience get a Floater CVS job vs a new grad with no retail experience?

 

[Marzapan]

Will a PGY1/PGY-2 with no retail experience get a Floater CVS job vs a new grad without no retail experience?

I know a couple PGY1 hospital grads (2019) who got retail jobs after residency.

 

[Saiyo]

I know a couple PGY1 hospital grads (2019) who got retail jobs after residency.

well that's unfortunate....

 

[Marzapan]

well that's unfortunate....

The funny thing is, when I talk to them they say that they "enjoy their jobs" and "have no desire to go back to hospital" which I don't buy.

Is that what working retail turns you into? A compulsion for lying with a straight face? I suppose that skill comes in handy when you need to interact with your DM...

 

[Sine Cura]

"No desire to go back to hospital" actually means any desire to do anything to further their "career" was crushed by the stupidity of retail

 

[Hedgehog32]

Largely agree with a lot of what this guy says -- he says get any experience (preferably something tangentially related to what you want to do) and then spin it during an interview.

I'll tell you that I'll hire someone who has hustled in the last year after graduating (even if its not in the perfect post-grad job) and has a good story to tell over the crybabies on this forum who didn't work a day in their life throughout 4+4 years of school and then stayed unemployed for a year after getting their license ..

Interviewer: What did you do in the last year?

• Customer service job: This was a humbling experience. I built up my customer service skills and was able to defuse stressful situations during an unprecedented pandemic. Because I come from a healthcare background, I stepped up and took a leadership role in terms of the public health aspect of opening up my store and made sure we were compliant with local, state, and national guidelines. This was viewed as a best practice and all the stores in my region adopted the guidelines that I put in place. I learned how to deal with stressful interactions with customers, a fast-paced and ever-changing environment, and how to meet and exceed goals placed by management despite an imperfect situation
  
  
• Unemployed grad 1-year after licensure who has done nothing: bUT dA SAtURAtION

Edit: Sure there are a lot of bad actors in the pharmacy saturation, but blaming others is not going to help your personal situation

I think it's relevant to consider the fact that you've mentioned before that you don't work in a traditional pharmacy setting, which leads to the question - even though you personally say that you'd prefer to hire a pharmacy school graduate who spent a year working in a non-pharmacy job post-graduation (e.g., customer service, fast food, bank, etc.), do you have any evidence at all to suggest that the people in charge of hiring pharmacists to work in traditional pharmacy settings (I.e., retail pharmacy chain DMs and hospital pharmacy directors) would share the same sentiment?

In other words, with the established minimum requirements for both retail (intern or pharmacist work experience in a chain retail setting) and hospital (PGY-1 completion or several years of experience) pharmacy jobs having become so stringent AND unwavering in recent years, why should anyone adopt the mindset that 6-12 months of generic customer service experience will make them competitive for a pharmacist job without any proof to back up this assertion? Aside from you and the podcast host, have you actually heard a chain retail DM or hospital DOP say that they'd hire a new grad with totally unrelated experience?

If you're going to call out we "crybabies" for remarking on the fact that a vast majority of us are not able to get jobs in light of the impossible-to-meet minimum job eligibility standards that the job market saturation has given employers the leverage to establish, then you could at least provide some fact-based reasoning for your assertion.

Otherwise, to make an analogy, it's kind of like me telling a hobbyist runner who wants to improve their running speeds that the reason they're not making progress towards achieving that goal is because they're not taking a specific dietary supplement... and yet at the same time, I'm not able to reference any clinical trials or studies of any nature to provide any sort of physiological basis for my assertion that use of the supplement may result in improved running speeds. (And to take it a step further, when they refuse to take the supplement because they don't know if it's safe OR effective, I shame them by accusing them of not being willing to do what it takes to improve.)

 

[Hedgehog32]

I know a couple PGY1 hospital grads (2019) who got retail jobs after residency.

What region of the country are they in? Just curious

 

[Marzapan]

What region of the country are they in? Just curious

Midwest- upper midwest

 

[Hedgehog32]

Midwest- upper midwest

That's kind of surprising to hear, as a number of people have told me that the midwest/upper-midwest is one of the last regions that isn't totally saturated. In fact, essentially everyone around me is telling me that if I "really want to make pharmacy work" (I'm a c/o 2020 graduate), I'll look into getting licensed in a few of those states and apply for chain retail positions. However, it sounds like that might not even be a viable strategy in light of the fact that residency-trained pharmacists are now competing for those jobs.

 

[lord999]

YFP 053: One Pharmacist's Journey from Financial Ignorance to

yourfinancialpharmacist.com

I'll say that most "boring" workaday pharmacists managed to do finance better than this guy without all of these elaborate hustles. Certainly the bottom quartile of industry pharmacists did better (the ones who are currently unemployed even because they know the cycles well enough). I've got my private opinions from Tony's stint at Illinois, but one wonders whether this is a case of occupational mismatch. The advice is fine, but most of the people who are listening really are in an occupational mismatch situation with no grasp of the labor market conditions.

 

[Seriously Serious]

This diversification of employment opportunities, due to the deplorable market situation, has led to people becoming one of those "The 'X' Pharmacist" (X= Happy, Financial, Fit, Youtuber, Comedian).

At this rate, we will see "The Taco Bell Pharmacist". Do not forget to follow them on instagram, follow their podcast, buy their book, and purchase their course to becoming a Taco Bell pharmacist. If you go to their website (TheTacoBellPharmacist.com) you can have your resume reviewed for the discounted price of $199.99. They also just published a novel RCT research paper in APhA: "How people feel about having a pharmacist on staff in taco bell".

 

[mentos]

Will a PGY1/PGY-2 with no retail experience get a Floater CVS job vs a new grad without no retail experience?

I think a new grad would be better than a resident. Residents tend to have a high and mighty attitude. They think they're better than other pharmacists who "only" have a degree. Their hospital training is irrelevant for retail. In fact I would say it's a disadvantage.

 

[Marzapan]

I think a new grad would be better than a resident. Residents tend to have a high and mighty attitude. They think they're better than other pharmacists who "only" have a degree. Their hospital training is irrelevant for retail. In fact I would say it's a disadvantage.

The counterargument to that is that:

1. Tangentially irrelevant experience is still better than completely irrelevant experience (uber driver pharmacist) or no experience (new grad).

2. Candidates who did a residency are in general of higher caliber than those who didn't, so there are less "unknowns" (aka this type of external hire will pose less risk than hiring a unproven, untested new grad with no experience).

3. The equalizing factor will be the lack of mobility given the state of the job market. If you were a residency trained grad and ended up in retail, then the longer you stay in retail the less competitive you are for hospital jobs because you are losing what skills/knowledge you gained from residency by virtue of not using any of it on a daily basis. I highly doubt that if you did a hospital residency and worked retail for 5 years immediately post-residency that any hospital would want to hire you because you are essentially a retail pharmacist at that point, and your skillset is not contemporary compared to a fresh PGY-2 grad, for example. Retail pharmacies, then, can absolutely take advantage of this situation and start mass hiring residency grads only because they know that the vast majority of them can't jump back to hospital (due to lack of jobs), and if they worked for a chain for 2+ years then they'd essentially become a career retail pharmacist.

 

[Wickett]

I think a new grad would be better than a resident. Residents tend to have a high and mighty attitude. They think they're better than other pharmacists who "only" have a degree. Their hospital training is irrelevant for retail. In fact I would say it's a disadvantage.

I would also worry that they would be looking to leave the moment something non retail became available/would be job searching from day 1. It takes a while for a pharmacist to get comfortable with a location and build up a rapport with customers....constantly cycling pharmacists leads to a lot of issues and headaches I don't want to deal with.

I don't hire pharmacists as PIC, but I've talked to people in my company about potential candidates for spots in my district. In general, they seem to rank applicants as experienced retail>>new non residency grad>>new residency trained grad (unless residency is one of those bs community pharmacy residencies)>>experienced clinical>>license holder out of the field for a long period of time.

Sample size is relatively small, but that ranking seems to hold up pretty well. There are studs and duds I've met that fall under all of those groups, but consistently the worst RPhs I've dealt with in retail are ones that were long time clinical pharmacists beforehand. Slow, inefficient, but can't be corrected on anything because they "once ran a hospital dept and know what they're doing."