What does a pharmacist do at the tech giant IBM? Let’s find out!

Interview Summary

 

1. What is a pharmacist doing at IBM?

 

Matt uses his healthcare knowledge and experience to provide technology solutions for clients. His clients may include health systems, pharmaceutical companies, medical imaging companies, and really any organization in the healthcare field in need of technology solutions.  This role is not one that is focused on utilizing clinical knowledge as much, but the pharmacy background is helpful in providing valuable insight to possible solutions for his clients.

 

Matt may be working on Watson Health, a subset of IBM’s healthcare division, which is a cognitive computing system.  This system gathers all sorts of healthcare relevant information, centralizes and synthesizes it, and then will make clinical, financial, and other types of recommendations. 

 

2. How did you even get started with IBM?

 

Matt became aware of this opportunity during a sales elective course at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.  The curriculum had room to take electives, so instead of taking electives through the pharmacy school, he took electives through the business school to gain some new perspectives.  One of these electives was a Sales Management course (others included Personal Finance, Managerial Accounting, and Real Estate Investing).  In this course, Matt was able to network with the professor and one of his previous students, who were both former/current IBM employees. These individuals were able to connect Matt to other people within the company and eventually led him to a job interview. 

 

Another valuable source of networking was Matt’s preceptors on his P4 Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPE’s).  The director of pharmacy services at the University of Michigan Health System helped Matt to really think about what he wanted out of a job.  He recommended everyone asking themselves two questions:

1. What are you good at?
2. What impact do you want to make?

Overall, the job at IBM came about through a lot of networking at school, on rotations, and at the company he was seeking employment.

 

3. What long-term goals is this position helping you to achieve?

 

There are three main things this job is helping Matt to achieve.

1. Wide scale impact on the healthcare industry
2. Huge growth potential and the opportunity for a variety of different experiences
3. Commission based compensation package which rewards performance with financial benefits

4. What do you wish you knew earlier on in your pharmacy career?

 

Matt wishes he would have been exposed to a lot of these nontraditional roles in pharmacy earlier in school.  There are so many different roles and more exposure to them would have been extremely helpful.  When evaluating these different roles, it is important to see what they can provide you both professionally, but also in terms of a lifestyle (work-life balance).

 

5. What are 3 pieces of advice you would give to someone looking to find the perfect role for them?

1. Figure out what you want from your career
2. Contact people in your field of interest
3. Seek out classes, student organizations, and electives related to your career interests