3 Pharmacy CV Examples and In-Depth Pharmacy CV Writing Guide

In this guide, we include three pharmacy CV templates and samples, which you can use now to optimise your job search. We also detail everything you need to know to write a job-winning pharmacist CV from scratch.

The CV templates and samples in this guide are optimised for all pharmacy roles, including clinical pharmacist, retail pharmacists, hospital pharmacist, nuclear pharmacists, industry pharmacists, informatics pharmacists and poison control pharmacists.

Start your CV with your name and contact information. Ensure to include your email address and phone number, alongside your location. If you have a strong LinkedIn profile, include your LinkedIn URL with your contact details.

You may be wondering if you should include a professional profile – often called a personal statement or executive summary – at the beginning of your CV. For pharmaceutical CVs, you should not include a professional profile.

In the first section of your CV, add your education details. Include the qualification, university name, grade/score and dates of study. Consider also including a list of the modules undertaken and the title of your thesis.

For pharmacy CVs, we usually recommend including your education details before your professional experience. However, if you feel that your experience should take precedence over your education then it’s perfectly acceptable to insert your employment experience first.

Ensure to use professional formatting when detailing your education. Take a look at the pharmacists' CV samples in this guide to see how your education should be presented.

Now it’s time to include any licences and certificates that allow you to practice as a pharmacist. If you have passed any licensure examinations or post-graduation examinations, ensure to include those in this section.

Include your professional work experience. Use the reverse-chronological format, starting with your most recent position and working backwards.

Add your job title, the name of the company you worked for, the location of employment and the dates of employment. Then include a few bullet points to highlight the key aspects of your role.

Ensure to provide some information about the type of work you performed. For example, were you employed as a clinical pharmacist? Did you work in a hospital setting? Give the reader insight into your role as a pharmacist.

In this section, focus only on paid employment in the pharmaceutical industry. If you’ve undertaken voluntary work, you can include this in a later section.

If you’re a UK trained pharmacist, please skip to section 7.

If you’re a pharmacist in the United States, you’ll be familiar with APPE. Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) is experience that enables aspiring pharmacists to apply the capabilities gained during their education in ‘real-life’ pharmaceutical settings. Of course, you should only include this section on your CV if you have gained APPE.

Format this section in the same way as you formatted the professional experience section. Include a few bullet points to illustrate the highlights of your APPE experiences and show how you utilised your education and training in the real-world.

Here is an example of a pharmacy CV’s APPE section:

If you’re a UK trained pharmacist, please skip to section 7.

Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience (IPPE) provides pharmacy students with the opportunity to observe pharmacists on the job while conducting various tasks under supervision.

If you’ve gained Introduction Pharmacy Practice Experience (IPPE), include a section dedicated to it following your APPE section. The IPPE section should be formatted and presented in the same way as the APPE section.

Here is an example of a pharmacy CV’s IPPE section:

Please note, this section is for pharmacists in the UK.

As a pharmacist in the UK, you will have probably completed 52 weeks of pre-registration training. In this section, detail your pre-registration training experience in the same way you detailed your employment experience.

Alternatively, you may also include your pre-registration training in your professional experience section.

If you’ve obtained any research experience, detail it in the same way you detailed your professional experience and IPPE/APPE.

Include the title of your research project, the name of your teacher (if necessary), the project dates, as well as details of conferences/presentations associated with your research project.

Skip this step if you don’t have any research experience.

This section is for those who have gained teaching experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical teaching experience may include teaching pharmacy students at universities or working as a teacher-practitioner.

You may want to combine this section with the research section (which we covered in Step 8). As the academic side of pharmacy usually involves research, your research and teaching experience may be one and the same. If so, bring your research and teaching experience together under one section.

If you do not have any teaching experience, skip this step.

Listing your publications on your CV is a great way of drawing attention to your expertise in specific areas of pharmacy. If your work has been published, or is due to be published, list these publications in a ‘publications’ section on your CV. These publications, which are usually peer-reviewed, may include research papers, conference papers and academic writings.

How should you format publications on your pharmacy CV?

Use the MLA style to document your publications. Using this format to reference your publications ensures you come across as a professional candidate.

But how do you format your publications using the MLA style?

Start by including the author’s name (your name). Then include the article title, the name of the publication, the volume number, the date and the page numbers of your work. Italicise the title of the publication to draw attention to it and make the section easier to read.

Here is an example:

‘Ben R. Robertson. ‘A study of pharmaceutical processes and practices’. The Big Cheese Pharmaceutical Journal, 43(2), 2019, 45-49.’

If the publication has more than one author, list them all in the order they are listed on the publication.

It’s possible that this section will take up more than an entire page of your CV. This is perfectly acceptable. Pharmacists’ CVs can be much longer in length than CVs for other professions.

If you’ve delivered presentations at conferences, list them in this section.

Not only does listing your conferences and presentations on your CV demonstrate your expertise in your field, but it also indicates that you’ve got strong communication skills.

How should you detail your presentations and conferences on your pharmacy CV?

Start by including the title of the presentation. Then add the name of the conference, the location of the conference and the date of the conference.

Here is an example:

‘Pharmacy in the Modern Era’, The Pharmacy Conference, Texas, United States (2020)

If you have completed both poster presentations and oral presentations, separate them by listing them under separate headers, one titled ‘poster presentations’ and the other titled ‘oral presentations’.

Showcasing honours and awards on your CV is a great way of making your document stand out. As employers receive large numbers of applications for available roles, honours and awards can be the difference in establishing yourself as the strongest candidate.

Include the name or title of the award you achieved, then add the name of the company or university where the award was achieved and the date the award was achieved.

Here is an example:

'Employee of the Year Award, Pharmaceutical Company (2020)'

If you’re a member of any organisations, especially pharmaceutical organisations, list them in this section.

As well as showing off your professional connections, including memberships and affiliations on your CV can also optimise your CV for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) – a type of recruitment screening software – as ATS is often searching for candidates who are associated with certain organisations.

When listing your memberships, include your title within the organisation, or simply ‘member of’, followed by the organisation’s name and the dates of your membership.

Here is an example:

'Member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (2012 – Present)'

In the final section of your CV, include any additional information to support your applications. This may include additional training, IT proficiency, languages and voluntary work.

Many HR departments use screening software to filter and rank candidates’ CVs based on specific keywords. As such, it’s important to optimise your CV in line with the requirements of these systems.

How do you optimise your CV for recruitment screening software?

Pepper relevant keywords throughout your CV. If you’re not sure which keywords to include, study job specifications for pharmacist jobs and analyse the essential criteria.

Professional formatting and an easy-to-follow layout are also important in optimising your CV for ATS. Avoid graphics and tables as they can have a negative impact on your CV’s ATS ranking.

One of the best ways of improving your CV’s performance in the job market is to ensure it is polished and professional in appearance. Use borders to separate sections and make use of your word processor’s spacing function to separate blocks of text.

Select one of the classic, commonly used fonts, such as Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman. Avoid creative fonts and garish colours. Additionally, ensure your CV’s text is neither too large nor too small to ensure your document does not appear unprofessional.

View our guide on CV format, which includes 12 CV examples.

Our ultimate guide on how to write a CV covers formatting and layout in much more detail.

Should pharmacy CVs include references?

Pharmacy CVs should not include references. References are requested at a later stage of the application process, so it’s not necessary to include them on your CV.

As we’ve already covered in this guide, pharmacy CVs include much more content than CVs for other professions. As such, they are generally much longer. In some cases, they are as long as eight pages.

How long should your pharmacy CV be? It should be as long as it needs to be. Don’t worry about cutting content and trimming your CV down. It’s standard for science, medical and pharmacy CVs to be many pages in length; a long CV won’t have a negative impact on your applications for pharmacist jobs.

We hope you’ve found this guide and our CV samples helpful in preparing an effective CV for jobs in the pharmaceutical industry. Feel free to use our CV templates now to improve your chances of landing pharmacy jobs.

For more in-depth CV writing help, view our ultimate guide on how to write a CV.