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How NHS England made pharmacy careers explorable online.

Pharmacy is a wider field than most people outside it realise, and the routes through it are not obvious from a job title. They existed. They just weren't anywhere a person could explore them.
How NHS England made pharmacy careers explorable online.
The challenge

The Challenge

The project started with the NHS needing a new, innovative and fun way to attract more people to pursue a career in pharmacy as well as retaining and engaging with the current workforce. Existing pharmacy careers websites were static, lacked real life stories and didn't showcase the vast career options as a pharmacist.

As traffic to the site grew and it became a national resource, Careers in pharmacy technical services needed a way for people to explore genuinely complex career pathways. Roles overlapped, specialisms branched, and the competencies that matter at each stage were not obvious from a job title.

All of it had been mapped. But, the map was an offline spreadsheet — accurate, detailed, and almost impossible to explore. Someone wondering whether technical services was for them, or what they would need to move up a level, had to be handed a file and left to work it out.

The journey

The Journey

What we built, in two stages

2020 — the careers website & interactive map

Shabina Azmi led the development of the original careers map for the Careers in Pharmacy website, setting out the routes through pharmacy careers in a form people could follow online rather than in a document.

2026 — the Technical Services Career Navigator

Suzanne Al-Rawi initiated the addition of the technical services section and the Technical Services Career Navigator, funded by the Infusions and Special Medicines programme at NHS England.

The Navigator lets people search job role competencies and tasks — so someone considering a move can see what a role actually requires, rather than guessing from a title. It also lets training providers see where to shape future programmes, because the gaps become visible across the whole structure rather than one role at a time.

The spreadsheet became something you could explore.

The project routeProject complete
01
Discover
Scoping & planning sessions
Align
02
Map the experience
Structure, routes & wireframes
Define
03
Design & build
A visual, interactive careers world
Create
04
Review together
Centralised comments & approvals
Refine
05
Build the content
Research, stories & job descriptions
Inform
06
Launch
A resource ready for its audience
Scale
The solution

What happened next

The Careers in Pharmacy site has been running for several years.

In the second year after launch, visits and engagement grew 145% year on year (source: Google Analytics). Traffic has since held broadly steady.

That second sentence matters more than the first. Careers content usually decays — it gets built once, goes gradually out of date, and quietly stops being read. This hasn't.

Visit the website
The results

The results

Careers in Pharmacy is now a national resource for the NHS and showcases a wide range of career pathways, job roles and detailed skills and competency requirements for each role including Technical Services and the Career Navigator.

70,000+
Visitors
10+
Sectors
73+
Job Roles
35+
Case Studies
Client feedback

If this sounds familiar

If the routes through your sector are real but only legible to people already inside it, that's the problem this solves. We build interactive careers tools and careers websites from your own role and career information, on your own site.

The whole process of developing our Careers In Pharmacy website was made so much easier by the team at CareerPaths. They were extremely professional, responsive to our requirements and have a fantastic team of designers, developers and project managers. We are delighted with the result.

Shane Costigan
Shane Costigan
Pharmacy Dean - Regional Head of Pharmacy WT&E. Workforce, Training and Education Directorate, NHS England – South East

I am proud of the way that this project has developed and have been happy to have been involved as I believe it really encompasses all the different roles in Pharmacy and shows what an exciting purposeful career Pharmacy is.

Shilpa Shah
Shilpa Shah
Project support & sponsor Kent Local Pharmaceutical Committee – Chief Executive Officer
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