In this installment of the Pharmacy Technician Career Corner, we’re going to discuss a few tips for preparing to successfully navigate the behavioral-based job interview. As you’re aware, earning a pharmacy technician salary begins with the job interview. And in the healthcare industry, the behavioral based interview is becoming the standard in front line questioning for prospective job candidates.

So What is Behavioral Interviewing?

For those that aren’t familiar with this style of questioning in a job interview, behavioral interviewing requires that interviewees use actual past examples to give answers to interview questions. Obviously, the best indicator of future job performance is what has actually happened in your prior employment experiences. So, by way of example, the questions tend to begin with “Tell me about a time when” as opposed to “What would you do if”.

We can all easily describe what we would do based on what we think the employer wants to hear, but describing what we have done requires us to dig deeper and think to actually present a concise and relevant answer to an interview question. As stated previously, these types of interview questions are becoming very popular in the health care industry, so when preparing to interview for a pharmacy technician job, you need to be prepared to be able to effectively answer these challenging questions.

So How Do I Prepare for the Behavioral Pharmacy Technician Job Interview?

The single biggest key to effectively preparing for these interviews is practice. If you search online for a list of the most common 100 behavioral interview questions, you’ll find several sources. Take the time to print one up and start to review the questions and think about your answers. You’ll start to notice that there are common themes that run through a list of 100 questions. This means that you can effectively prepare for answering 100 potential questions by thinking through as few as 5 or 6 relevant past experiences that can be shaped to various questions.

Look through the list of questions and think about how you would answer each one using one of your 5 or 6 past work examples. Practicing answering out loud. You might even want to go so far as to video your responses to pick up on any unwanted body language or habits that you need to tone down. I’ve done this before and noticed that during responses I was continually waving my open hands, with my palms facing up, in circles, almost like a wafting motion. Not good, and I wasn’t even aware of how much I was doing it!

Secondly, you need to think through these responses in detail. Many recruiting and career coaches will tell you that one of the biggest ways to fall flat in behavioral interviews is by not giving enough detail to get to the issues which the employer wants you to face. This can be especially critical in pharmacy technician jobs, where errors and customer demands can have significant consequences.

Lastly, don’t memorize your answers to questions when you’re interviewing for pharmacy technician jobs. You want your responses to appear natural and relaxed and not over-practiced.

While the behavioral based interview format can be challenging to prepare for, follow these preparation techniques and you’ll be on your way to earning a pharmacy technician salary in no time.

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