Apply to Walgreen’s, CVS, any major chain retailers, etc…

It’s not easy to get a job with no experience, but is absolutely possible. Maybe start out in the front of the store, or the photo lab and prove your competency. Some store and pharmacy managers WILL hire directly into the pharmacy off the street if you interview as a promising candidate.

You can do online and community college, but it’s not necessary, and not worth the cost unless you can get it for free (gov assistance or such).

Walgreen’s will do on the job training and send you to a class once a week at their local home office for a six weeks taught by one of their pharmacists or a lead technician and providing the CPhT exam book, work book, and flash cards covering material on the CPhT exam. Then they will also cover the exam fee, last I checked it was around $125-$135.

Retail is fun at first, can be fast paced, demanding, and exciting, but it’s great for getting started and foot in the door to open other possibilities. You assist the pharmacist in all pharmacy operations: receiving Rx’s, entering patient info, enter the Rx, filling the Rx, resolving insurance discrepancies, calling doctors offices to verify scripts in question, compounding medications, to ringing up patients.

Hospital is where to get better money, hours, benefits, etc… after some retail experience.

Most likely, you’d start out really low pay, $8-$9/hr depending on location. Then you get raises after certified, anniversaries, and such.

There are many variations of jobs in pharmacy, look on career builder. You can even turn pharmacy experience into an IT job if you like computer systems.

Starting salary would probably be a low ball $20K annually, but in time can easily obtain up to $40k at around $20.00/hr (which in this day and age is nearly impossible for no college education). It’s a great field and very rewarding if you play your cards right and take an interest in medicine.

Any more questions, don’t be shy to ask.

Good luck!