Which red states are you referring to? I'm in the southeast, and I've been told that it's getting pretty hard to land a hospital position here, even as a residency graduate. I don't know if this is true, but I was told that one of the local hospitals graduates 10-12+ pharmacists from their residency program every year and that they've only hired 1 or 2 in the last several years. I'm not in a desirable (for the southeast) area like Atlanta.
I've been trolling and making fun of the pharmd degree. And I will probably say something about the pharmacy organizations and their leaders. And I might go too far with my comments. So I won't be able to give you a exact location. I'll give you a clue; it was never a part of the Confederacy. That's as descriptive as I will get.
I don't know what the situation is like in Georgia. But where I live, the hospitals will hire you without a residency. But these are small community hospitals, not large academic hospitals. Whenever they post an opening, they put under the requirements:
ASHP-accredited residency preferred. So not having a residency does not disqualify you. Out of the last three positions that had opened, which were all for clinical/staff hybrid pharmacists, none of the hires had done a residency. Residency does not necessarily assure you a full-time position. It might not even give you an advantage over a candidate who has not done a residency.
It is who you know that matters.
What is key is
networking. If you have family involved in hospital or retail pharmacy, use that connection to get a tech job and build a work history as a pharmacy tech. If not, ask any friends if they can help you get a tech job. If not, then send applications out to as many hospital and retail locations as you can. If you want to start with a less hectic environment, go do hospital. But if you're ready to take on the Horde, go fight it out in retail. Do whatever you can to get that first job. You will have to learn a lot in a very short time, but with experience, you will be more attractive to employers. Use that first job to apply for tech positions in a more desirable settings later on.
By working as a tech, you will be building a rapport with your colleagues and your superiors. In retail, senior techs and the pharmacists will help you out when it comes to impressing management and landing a job as a pharmacist (you need to know your metrics!) If you jive well with your coworkers, they will look out for you. There is nothing worse than an inefficient team that cannot work together. If you help them keep management off their backs, you are gold.
In the hospital setting, you are basically auditioning yourself. You are building a relationship with the senior pharmacists and the DOP. They will be the ones who will ultimately hire you. If you have them on your side, it will give you a tremendous advantage when positions open. If they know you have applied, then a phone call from the DOP will whisk your application down to the pharmacy for immediate review. Apps from other candidates will rot away in HR limbo.
Do not underestimate the power of having an inside connection.
It might not seem fair, but internal applicants will always get a higher priority than an outsider. Specs like GPA, research experience, volunteering, holding a leadership position in school clubs (which are all meaningless in the real world) will have negligible influence on being hired.
If all this fails, then residency will give you another opportunity to build rapport. The ASHP claims that residency is preparing pharmacy students for emerging roles (Ha!) but you need to treat it as another opportunity to network and get an advantage in the hiring process.
You have to be vigilant. Use any avenue and opportunity to increase your chances of employment after graduation.
DO NOT BE THAT PHARMACY STUDENT WHO NEVER WORKED BEFORE GRADUATION. Do not make that mistake and end up unemployed.
And finally...
If you have to get another degree after the PharmD, then you did it wrong.
