"patient care," "diagnosis," and "customer service" aren't the only skills we found optometrists list on their resumes. In fact, there's a whole list of optometrist responsibilities that we found, including:
See the full list of optometrist skills.
After discovering the most helpful skills, we moved onto what kind of education might be helpful in becoming an optometrist. We found that 36.2% of optometrists have graduated with a bachelor's degree and 2.4% of people in this position have earned their master's degrees. While most optometrists have a college degree, you may find it's also true that generally it's possible to be successful in this career with only a high school degree. In fact, our research shows that one out of every six optometrists were not college graduates.
Those optometrists who do attend college, typically earn either a optometry degree or a biology degree. Less commonly earned degrees for optometrists include a business degree or a psychology degree.
Once you're ready to become an optometrist, you should explore the companies that typically hire optometrists. According to optometrist resumes that we searched through, optometrists are hired the most by Walmart, National Vision Administrators, and Visionworks. Currently, Walmart has 677 optometrist job openings, while there are 541 at National Vision Administrators and 430 at Visionworks.
If you're interested in companies where optometrists make the most money, you'll want to apply for positions at Dignity Health, Mount Sinai Health System, and Kaiser Permanente. We found that at Dignity Health, the average optometrist salary is $273,488. Whereas at Mount Sinai Health System, optometrists earn roughly $272,507. And at Kaiser Permanente, they make an average salary of $244,420.
View more details on optometrist salaries across the United States.