Hi Everyone
How about volunteering in a pharmacy..... if it’s hard to find a job as pharmacist in your area..... any views/thoughts/ experience .... please share.... thanks.
First, I would say that "volunteer" is not the as precise a word for what you want to do, call it something like "without compensation" worker, because you are not volunteering for an altruistic purpose but to gain employment. I'm not opposed to the situation to do this up to a couple of days for a no-pressure sort of feel out experience (especially if you are going to work in an independent or a niche practice pharmacy where people easily can break the experience). I also consider applicant's "Volunteer" work, because there is the expectation for it now (and it's also signalling that the applicant has means). I'm not trying to bring up the fourth date analogy, but there's some payoff that has to be involved for you to do this. I do think if you work a real saturated market like Philadelphia that it would be better to relocate if you did not already have a good network of people willing to recommend you.
There's nothing particularly wrong with volunteering as a pharmacist, however, I separate marketing (like free health clinics and such where you are more or less compelled to attend) and true volunteers. I agree with
@ChalupaBatman86 that if I see it without a concurrent job, that means something to me and not exactly positive. But, for those who do "volunteer" professionally quite a bit, I do make it a point to look into the circumstances, because it is actually abnormal without something else going on. Those people tend to be more like Albert Schweitzer in all respects and hard to employ in a gainful sense (and by the way, that's a trigger word for me in medical admissions because anyone invoking his example in an interview does not know his actual circumstances of his practice).
Because many corporations mandate a certain level of "community involvement" in the off time for performance management and promotion opportunities. That high-end autistic Microsoft developer volunteering in ASPCA is not doing it out of the kindness of her heart in particular (she'd be much more at home with four walls, a cup of coffee, and a good book), but because if she doesn't Micro$oft penalizes her heavily on her year-end. Free good publicity is not free for them either.
Employee Engagement and Partnership | Microsoft Philanthropies
Now that said, could you imagine Walgreens or CVS integrating an unpaid service component for off-duty time in exchange for "consideration"?
I'll work health clinics with my academic hat on (although I "volunteer" enough being the pharmacy students' pincushion which they suck much worse than nurses when done), but that's not volunteering for me (or the church things that I despise and have to deal with as social costs). Volunteering means simply that I'm under no compulsion, but I am giving my time or resources anyway. So, I'm one of the volunteer CMP trainers in the area sans any management responsibility, because I'd like for people to shoot true when we are all in the woods.
