Top 12 Medical Laboratory Technologist Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the dynamic, detail-heavy world of medical laboratory technology, a strong skill set isn’t just a checklist—it’s your engine. The following guide spotlights the top 12 competencies hiring managers watch closely, and patients unknowingly depend on.
Medical Laboratory Technologist Skills
- Phlebotomy
- Microscopy
- Hematology
- Biochemistry
- Immunology
- PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction)
- ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay)
- Mass Spectrometry
- Flow Cytometry
- Chromatography
- LIS (Laboratory Information System)
- Quality Control
1. Phlebotomy
Phlebotomy is the collection of blood specimens through venipuncture or capillary sampling—clean, precise, patient-first. It’s the gateway to accurate testing.
Why It's Important
Without high-quality samples, even the best analyzers falter. Reliable blood draws reduce pre-analytical errors, protect patient safety, and keep turnaround times tight.
How to Improve Phlebotomy Skills
Nail the basics: Vein selection, proper tourniquet time, correct order of draw, and suitable gauge choice. Less hemolysis, fewer redraws.
Prioritize patient experience: Clear explanations, gentle technique, and confident posture lower anxiety and improve cooperation.
Lock in identification: Label at the bedside, verify two identifiers, and scan barcodes immediately. Mislabels are never trivial.
Prevent contamination: Aseptic prep, dry site before puncture, avoid touching after cleaning, and follow current infection-control guidance.
Handle special cases: Pediatrics, geriatrics, and difficult sticks require adapted positioning, micro-collection know-how, and patience.
Refine technique continuously: Practice with simulations, seek feedback, audit hemolysis rates, and review near-miss events.
Protect sample integrity: Mix additives gently, observe fill volumes, and transport under proper conditions and timing.
How to Display Phlebotomy Skills on Your Resume
2. Microscopy
Microscopy lets technologists examine cells, tissues, and microorganisms—direct, revealing, unforgiving to sloppy technique.
Why It's Important
From urine sediments to blood smears and Gram stains, microscopy turns patterns into diagnoses, and subtle findings into critical calls.
How to Improve Microscopy Skills
Use Köhler illumination: Optimize contrast and resolution; poor lighting masks detail.
Maintain the instrument: Clean lenses, calibrate regularly, check stage alignment, and replace immersion oil when degraded.
Choose the right optics: Correct objectives and filters for the job; oil immersion when warranted, not by habit.
Perfect slide prep: Even smears, proper fixation, consistent staining times, and robust QC slides to anchor expectations.
Document well: Capture calibrated digital images, standardize file naming, and store with metadata for traceability.
Train the eye: Compare with atlas images, review borderline cases with peers, and revisit tough calls after outcomes are known.
How to Display Microscopy Skills on Your Resume
3. Hematology
Hematology covers cellular blood components, indices, coagulation, and morphology—numbers and nuance, side by side.
Why It's Important
It’s central to detecting anemia, infections, coagulopathies, and hematologic malignancies. Results guide therapies within hours, sometimes minutes.
How to Improve Hematology Skills
Master analyzers and flags: Understand principles (impedance, optical, fluorescence), interpret flags, and know when to reflex to smear review.
Sharpen morphology: Identify poikilocytes, inclusions, blasts, parasites, and platelet clumps with confidence. Consistency beats speed.
Tight QC and delta checks: Levey-Jennings monitoring, Westgard rules, and review of significant patient-to-patient shifts.
Coagulation clarity: Validate reagent lots, monitor instrument temperature, and assess heparin/DOAC interferences when results look off.
Specimen quality first: Proper anticoagulant ratios, prompt mixing, and avoiding clotted or partially filled tubes.
How to Display Hematology Skills on Your Resume
4. Biochemistry
Clinical biochemistry measures analytes in blood and other fluids—electrolytes, enzymes, hormones, metabolites—to map physiology in real time.
Why It's Important
These values steer diagnoses and treatment decisions across every service line: emergency care, endocrinology, nephrology, cardiology, and more.
How to Improve Biochemistry Skills
Own the pre-analytical phase: Know stability limits, manage hemolysis/lipemia/icterus flags, and enforce correct tube types and handling.
Calibrate and verify: Use appropriate calibrators, verify linearity and reportable ranges, and perform regular calibration checks.
QC with purpose: Apply Westgard rules, track shifts and trends, and act early—don’t wait for failures to shout.
Reference intervals matter: Verify locally, account for age and sex differences, and document the verification process.
Leverage automation safely: Validate autoverification rules, delta checks, reflex algorithms, and middleware edits before turning them loose.
How to Display Biochemistry Skills on Your Resume
5. Immunology
Immunology explores antibodies, antigens, cytokines, and cellular responses—the body’s signals and alarms laid bare.
Why It's Important
From autoimmune panels to allergy testing, infectious serology to vaccine response monitoring, immunology testing shapes diagnosis and follow-up.
How to Improve Immunology Skills
Validate cutoffs and curves: Confirm decision thresholds, assess parallelism, and scrutinize lot-to-lot differences.
Know cross-reactivity: Understand potential interferences and heterophile effects; design confirmatory algorithms when needed.
Use robust controls: Include high/low controls and internal standards to monitor drift and reagent stability.
Document traceability: Track reagent lots, expiration, storage conditions, and instrument maintenance tied to performance shifts.
Stay versatile: Keep current with multiplex assays, rapid tests, and cell-based methods; each has quirks and strengths.
How to Display Immunology Skills on Your Resume
6. PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction)
PCR amplifies specific DNA or RNA targets so they can be detected, quantified, or sequenced. Small signals, boosted cleanly.
Why It's Important
It underpins pathogen detection, genetic testing, and oncology workflows—fast, sensitive, and decisive when optimized.
How to Improve PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) Skills
Design wisely: Specific primers, short amplicons, minimal secondary structures. Validate in silico and in practice.
Control contamination: Unidirectional workflow, dedicated spaces, aerosol-resistant tips, and dUTP/UNG systems to stop carryover.
Tune reaction conditions: Optimize Mg2+, annealing temperatures (use gradients), cycle numbers, and enzyme choice (hot-start when needed).
Protect nucleic acids: Use RNase-free technique for RT-PCR, assess template quality, and include inhibition controls.
Use proper controls: Positive, negative, and no-template controls; for qPCR, standard curves with acceptable efficiency.
How to Display PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) Skills on Your Resume
7. ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay)
ELISA detects and quantifies antigens or antibodies using enzyme-mediated signal generation on plate-bound targets.
Why It's Important
It’s a workhorse: sensitive, scalable, and adaptable across infectious disease, autoimmunity, endocrinology, and therapeutic monitoring.
How to Improve ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) Skills
Optimize coating and blocking: Titrate antigen or capture antibody; test blockers (BSA, casein, protein mixes) to curb background.
Right antibody, right dose: Titrate primary/secondary reagents; verify specificity and minimize cross-reactivity.
Mind the mechanics: Consistent incubation times, plate shaking when appropriate, thorough washing to remove unbound material.
Choose the substrate well: Match HRP or alkaline phosphatase systems with compatible substrates; avoid edge effects with careful plate handling.
Analyze curves correctly: Use 4PL/5PL regression, verify linear range, and run replicates to detect outliers.
How to Display ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) Skills on Your Resume
8. Mass Spectrometry
Mass spectrometry separates and detects molecules by mass-to-charge ratio, often paired with chromatography for specificity and sensitivity.
Why It's Important
It unlocks low-level analyte quantitation, resolves interferences, and supports drug monitoring, toxicology, metabolomics, and proteomics.
How to Improve Mass Spectrometry Skills
Strengthen sample prep: Use protein precipitation, solid-phase extraction, or dilution workflows to tame matrix effects.
Use internal standards: Stable isotope-labeled standards correct for recovery and ionization variability.
Refine LC conditions: Optimize gradients, column temperature, and injection volumes; minimize carryover with robust wash steps.
Target wisely: Scheduled MRM/SRM, accurate mass filtering, and tuned collision energies for crisp transitions.
Verify performance: System suitability tests, calibration checks, reference materials, and proficiency testing to anchor accuracy.
How to Display Mass Spectrometry Skills on Your Resume
9. Flow Cytometry
Flow cytometry measures physical and fluorescent properties of cells or particles in a fluid stream—fast, multicolor, data-rich.
Why It's Important
It underlies immunophenotyping, minimal residual disease assessment, stem cell enumeration, and functional immune studies.
How to Improve Flow Cytometry Skills
Prep clean samples: Filter, lyse RBCs appropriately, and prevent clumping. Debris in, trouble out.
Standardize staining: Titrate antibodies, include viability dyes, and stick to consistent incubation conditions.
Control the optics: Daily QC with beads, proper PMT voltages, compensation using single-stain controls, and FMO controls for gating.
Gating discipline: Exclude doublets, set clear hierarchies, and document gating strategies to ensure reproducibility.
Know your platform: Conventional vs spectral instruments require tailored setup and analysis techniques.
How to Display Flow Cytometry Skills on Your Resume
10. Chromatography
Chromatography separates complex mixtures—LC, GC, and more—to identify and quantify target compounds with precision.
Why It's Important
Therapeutic drug monitoring, toxicology, metabolic profiling, and purity checks all lean on clean separation and stable retention times.
How to Improve Chromatography Skills
Prep matters: Filter, centrifuge, or extract to reduce particulates and matrix components that wreck columns and peaks.
Pick the right column: Match stationary phase chemistry and dimensions to analyte polarity and size; use guard columns to extend life.
Tune the mobile phase: Optimize pH, ionic strength, and organic composition; degas thoroughly and keep solvents fresh.
Control flow and temperature: Stabilize flow rates and column temperatures to tighten retention time reproducibility.
Watch the peaks: Monitor resolution, tailing factors, and plate counts; adjust gradient shape or buffer conditions as needed.
How to Display Chromatography Skills on Your Resume
11. LIS (Laboratory Information System)
An LIS manages orders, specimens, instruments, results, and reports—quietly orchestrating the lab’s data backbone.
Why It's Important
It reduces errors, speeds reporting, supports analytics, and anchors regulatory compliance. When LIS hums, the lab moves.
How to Improve LIS (Laboratory Information System) Skills
Interface everything: Build and validate analyzer interfaces, and support standards-based messaging (e.g., HL7/FHIR) for interoperability.
Use smart rules: Autoverification, reflex testing, delta checks, and critical value alerts—designed, tested, and audited.
Secure by design: Role-based access, audit trails, strong authentication, and reliable downtime/backup procedures.
Clean data, clean reports: Standardize test codes, reference ranges, and units; maintain a rigorous change-control process.
Train and iterate: Provide targeted user training, gather feedback, and improve workflows without breaking traceability.
How to Display LIS (Laboratory Information System) Skills on Your Resume
12. Quality Control
Quality control is the set of procedures that keeps results accurate, precise, and consistent—day after day, lot after lot.
Why It's Important
Reliable data protects patients and clinicians from wrong turns. QC is the barricade against drift, error, and assumption.
How to Improve Quality Control Skills
Build a quality system: Align with current medical lab standards (e.g., ISO 15189:2022). Document, verify, and continually improve.
Use intelligent QC: Levey-Jennings charts, Westgard rules, and risk-based QC plans that fit each method’s stability and criticality.
Verify the whole process: Lot-to-lot checks, calibration verification, commutability of controls, and robust instrument maintenance.
External comparisons: Participate in proficiency testing and external quality assessment to benchmark performance.
Own errors—then fix them: Encourage reporting, perform root-cause analysis, implement corrective and preventive actions, and audit the outcomes.
How to Display Quality Control Skills on Your Resume
