In the past, this blog has written a few different times on the fact that, in general, healthcare wages have been steadily climbing from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, up until its relative end in mid-2022, until now (early 2023), and this includes wages for pharmacy employees, including pharmacists, registered pharmacy technicians (RPht), and pharmacy assistants. We want to share a recent experience that RPI Consulting Group had with one our pharmacist candidates and a pharmacy client of ours in a remote location, and how the candidate ended up being hired for a larger wage than we’ve ever seen before. It happened for them, and it can happen for you! Read on to find out what happened, and if you’re looking for the latest job opportunities and healthcare news, be sure to visit our blog regularly!
A Pharmacist Story to Remember
At the beginning of December, RPI’s Account Managers were contacted by one our clients who operates a community pharmacy in a remote area of Northern Ontario. The client had recently learned that he and his regular pharmacist would need to be out of town for an extended period of time – potentially for as long as a month – and he needed to find a relief pharmacist to come in and take over the store ASAP. This isn’t as easy as it sounds – the aforementioned remote location and necessary quick turnaround time were fairly large hurdles for our team to deal with, not to mention the fact that this assignment would carry over into the holiday season. We reached out to our network of candidates, which literally numbers in the thousands, but only a handful of people showed any interest in the position – which, admittedly, is something that we had expected, given the short notice and the time of year. In the end, we settled on a very skilled and professional pharmacist who lives in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that was willing to relocate for the month-long relief assignment. This candidate worked 23 shifts for an average of 8-10 hours a day, and at the end of it all, he pocketed somewhere between $20,000 and $25,000 in wages.
As you can imagine, this is an absolutely unheard of salary, and even all of us here at RPI were stunned – after all, we’ve been in this business since 2002, and to see one our candidates take home a gigantic paycheque is very, very rewarding to us! Ultimately, the message that we’re trying to get across with this story is this: if you’re a candidate for RPI, you’ll want to always, always ensure that you’re checking your emails and your push notifications for the latest job opportunities. While opportunities like this one are admittedly rare, you simply never know what might become available – and now, the candidate in question has decided to take a well-earned trip to an all-inclusive resort later this year. And frankly, we think it’s well-deserved!
Don’t miss out on a career- or even life-changing opportunity
In closing, we want to reiterate how important it is for you to keep your availability up-to-date in your RPI account, and to always keep all lines of communication open – phone, email, SMS, etc. The next whopper of an opportunity could come around sooner than you think, and you certainly don’t want to miss out on it! And if you’d like to be considered for any of our future travel opportunities, please feel free to contact your Account Manager directly or send an email to jobs@rpigroup.ca
