Top 12 Clinical Laboratory Technologist Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the dynamic world of healthcare, Clinical Laboratory Technologists stand out for their technical prowess and exacting habits. A resume that actually shows your strongest skills—clearly, succinctly, without fluff—helps hiring teams see how you shape patient care and diagnostic certainty, day after day.
Clinical Laboratory Technologist Skills
- Phlebotomy
- PCR
- ELISA
- Microscopy
- Hematology
- Biochemistry
- Spectrophotometry
- Flow Cytometry
- Chromatography
- LIS (Laboratory Information System)
- Quality Control
- Immunohistochemistry
1. Phlebotomy
Phlebotomy covers venipuncture, capillary collection, and specimen handling to secure blood samples that tell the real story. Technique, comfort, and safety intersect here.
Why It's Important
Accurate blood collection underpins diagnosis, treatment monitoring, and transfusion readiness. Poor technique can skew results. Good technique protects patients and the data.
How to Improve Phlebotomy Skills
Stay current: Review up-to-date venipuncture guidelines, order of draw, and preanalytical variables. Refresh often.
Drill the fundamentals: Site selection, angle, tourniquet time, tube mixing, and labeling—practice until it’s muscle memory.
Communicate calmly: Reduce patient anxiety with clear, brief explanations. It improves cooperation and lowers redraw rates.
Obsess over safety: PPE, needlestick prevention, sharps disposal, and post-exposure steps—no shortcuts.
Tight specimen control: Correct containers, prompt transport, temperature and light protection where required.
Ask for feedback: Peer observation and periodic competency checks surface blind spots you can fix quickly.
Keep learning: Annual refreshers and simulations keep technique crisp.
How to Display Phlebotomy Skills on Your Resume
2. PCR
PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) amplifies specific DNA or RNA targets. In the clinic, it drives detection of pathogens, inherited variants, minimal residual disease, and more. RT-PCR and qPCR add speed and quantitation.
Why It's Important
It delivers high sensitivity and specificity, fast. That means earlier diagnosis, smarter isolation and treatment, and confident monitoring.
How to Improve PCR Skills
Design with intent: Primers and probes should avoid secondary structures and cross-reactivity. Validate in silico, then in wet lab.
Honor the template: Clean extraction, inhibitor removal, and RNA integrity for RT-PCR matter more than any fancy polymerase.
Tune the chemistry: Optimize Mg2+, annealing temps, and extension times. Hot-start enzymes curb nonspecifics.
Control the run: Include negative, positive, and no-RT controls. Add internal controls to flag inhibition.
Protect the workspace: Unidirectional workflow, aerosol-resistant tips, UV decontamination, and separate pre/post areas cut contamination risk.
Mind the instrument: Calibrate cyclers, verify ramp rates, and keep maintenance logs tight.
Document and trend: Ct shifts, efficiency, standard curve linearity—watch them. Investigate drifts early.
How to Display PCR Skills on Your Resume
3. ELISA
ELISA detects and quantifies proteins, hormones, antibodies, and antigens on a plate using enzyme-linked reactions. Straightforward, but unforgiving when preanalytical or procedural steps slip.
Why It's Important
It offers sensitivity, specificity, and throughput for infectious disease workups, autoimmune panels, therapeutic drug monitoring, and biomarker surveillance.
How to Improve ELISA Skills
Coat with care: Use well-validated capture antibodies. Optimize concentration and time for stable binding.
Block smart: Choose blocking agents that reduce background without masking epitopes. Test BSA, casein, or proprietary mixes.
Standardize samples: Control freeze-thaws, use matched diluents, and keep handling consistent across runs.
Nail incubation: Time and temperature push signal and background in opposite directions—balance them.
Wash like you mean it: Sufficient cycles and proper buffer reduce nonspecific haze. Avoid overzealous washing that strips complexes.
Choose detection wisely: Colorimetric for simplicity, chemiluminescence or fluorescence for sensitivity. Stop reactions consistently.
Analyze rigorously: Use fit-for-purpose curve models, include reference standards, and track plate controls over time.
QC every plate: Positive/negative controls, acceptance ranges, and repeat criteria keep results trustworthy.
How to Display ELISA Skills on Your Resume
4. Microscopy
Microscopy turns the invisible into something you can reason with—cells, tissues, parasites, crystals, the sly morphologic clues hiding in plain sight.
Why It's Important
It powers differential counts, urine sediment interpretation, gram stains, and tissue review, sharpening diagnoses when automation needs a human eye.
How to Improve Microscopy Skills
Maintain and calibrate: Clean optics, align illumination (Köhler), and verify performance regularly.
Stain with intent: Optimize fixation and staining protocols; poor prep wrecks even the finest lenses.
Use digital tools: Image capture and measurement software help document, teach, and standardize.
Train continuously: Case review libraries and blinded challenges keep pattern recognition sharp.
Tame the light: Adjust condenser, aperture, and contrast for each specimen type. Small tweaks—big clarity.
Quality objectives: High-NA lenses and proper immersion oils boost resolution without artifacts.
How to Display Microscopy Skills on Your Resume
5. Hematology
Hematology evaluates blood and bone marrow: CBCs, differentials, smears, coag testing, and cell morphology that hints at deeper disease.
Why It's Important
It flags anemia types, infections, thrombosis risk, hemoglobinopathies, leukemias, and more—often the earliest signal something’s amiss.
How to Improve Hematology Skills
Master analyzers: Understand flags, limits, and interference patterns. Verify with smear review when signals don’t match the clinical picture.
Sharpen morphology: Daily slide review and case correlations train the eye—rouleaux vs agglutination, blasts vs reactive lymphs.
Coagulation discipline: Preanalytical rigor (citrate fill, mixing, transport), instrument calibration, and factor assay verification are nonnegotiable.
Trend and correlate: Link CBC trends with chemistry, micro, and pathology notes for full context.
Stay updated: New parameters (e.g., RET-He, immature granulocytes), digital morphology, and guideline shifts arrive steadily—keep pace.
How to Display Hematology Skills on Your Resume
6. Biochemistry
Clinical biochemistry deciphers enzymes, metabolites, proteins, and electrolytes. Numbers, yes—but numbers that map physiology.
Why It's Important
From cardiac markers to renal panels and endocrine assays, biochemical data guide urgent decisions and long-haul management alike.
How to Improve Biochemistry Skills
Own preanalytics: Fasting status, timing, anticoagulants, hemolysis indices—control them to protect accuracy.
Calibrate and verify: Method validations, linearity checks, AMR verification, and lot-to-lot comparisons prevent drift.
Interference awareness: Lipemia, icterus, heterophilic antibodies, biotin—recognize patterns and apply mitigations.
Delta checks and reflexes: Build rules that catch improbable changes and trigger confirmations or alternative methods.
Interpret with nuance: Reference intervals, decision limits, biological variation—context turns results into meaning.
How to Display Biochemistry Skills on Your Resume
7. Spectrophotometry
This technique quantifies analytes by measuring light absorption or transmission at defined wavelengths. Simple principle, powerful range.
Why It's Important
It supports routine chemistries, enzyme kinetics, and specialized assays with precision and speed, if the system is kept in tight control.
How to Improve Spectrophotometry Skills
Calibrate routinely: Use traceable standards and verify wavelength accuracy and photometric linearity.
Maintain optics: Clean cuvettes and optical paths; replace scratched or clouded components.
Handle samples cleanly: Consistent pathlengths, bubble-free loading, correct blanks—small details, big impact.
Quality controls: Internal and external controls with defined acceptability limits. Investigate trends before they become failures.
Robust methods: Verify reaction times, temperature control, and interference resilience during validation.
Document everything: Maintenance logs, calibration certificates, and QC charts make audits smooth and quality visible.
How to Display Spectrophotometry Skills on Your Resume
8. Flow Cytometry
Flow cytometry interrogates individual cells in suspension using lasers and fluorochromes, yielding multiparametric profiles at speed.
Why It's Important
It defines immunophenotypes in leukemias and lymphomas, tracks immune reconstitution, and quantifies rare populations that other methods miss.
How to Improve Flow Cytometry Skills
Prep cells right: Maintain viability, proper counts, and clean suspensions. Buffer choices can make or break background.
Standardize daily: Bead-based setup, performance checks, and SOPs keep instruments comparable over time.
Optimize voltages: Set PMT voltages per dye to maximize resolution without saturating signals.
Compensate accurately: Use single-stained controls and apply robust compensation matrices for multicolor panels.
Design smart panels: Balance fluorochrome brightness with antigen density; minimize spectral overlap at the source.
Gate with discipline: Logical gating hierarchies, FMO controls, and doublet discrimination prevent misclassification.
Train and audit: Inter-operator comparisons and periodic case reviews keep interpretation consistent.
How to Display Flow Cytometry Skills on Your Resume
9. Chromatography
Chromatography separates complex mixtures so you can identify and quantify components—drugs, metabolites, hormones—cleanly.
Why It's Important
It delivers specificity and sensitivity in toxicology, endocrinology, and metabolic workups, often outperforming immunoassays when interferences lurk.
How to Improve Chromatography Skills
Tune the mobile phase: Adjust solvent strength, pH, buffers, and modifiers to sharpen resolution.
Choose and care for columns: Match stationary phase to analyte chemistry. Condition, flush, and store properly to extend life.
Clean samples: Solid-phase extraction or protein precipitation reduces matrix effects and protects instruments.
Control temperature: Stable column temps improve reproducibility and peak shape.
Dial in flow: Balance run time with resolution; avoid pressures that stress hardware.
Use gradients wisely: For complex panels, gradient elution resolves co-eluters without marathon runs.
QC relentlessly: System suitability tests, retention time windows, and calibration verification catch drift early.
How to Display Chromatography Skills on Your Resume
10. LIS (Laboratory Information System)
A Laboratory Information System manages orders, specimens, results, QC, and reporting. It’s the nervous system of the lab.
Why It's Important
Strong LIS workflows cut errors, speed turnaround, and make compliance manageable. Data flows cleanly; clinicians get what they need faster.
How to Improve LIS (Laboratory Information System) Skills
Streamline workflows: Map processes, automate routine steps, reduce duplicate entry, and tighten verification points.
Integrate broadly: Connect with EHRs, billing, and instruments using standard messaging (HL7, FHIR). Less swivel-chairing, fewer mistakes.
Secure the data: Role-based access, audit trails, encryption at rest and in transit. Test your backups and disaster recovery.
Train continuously: Short, focused refreshers and tip sheets keep staff efficient as features evolve.
Close the feedback loop: Capture user pain points, prioritize fixes, and measure the impact of each update.
Use analytics: Dashboards for TAT, pending queues, and QC exceptions help leaders act before bottlenecks harden.
How to Display LIS (Laboratory Information System) Skills on Your Resume
11. Quality Control
Quality Control binds preanalytical, analytical, and post-analytical phases together so reported results reflect reality—consistently.
Why It's Important
Accurate, reliable data drive safe care. QC catches slips early, limits repeats, and protects trust.
How to Improve Quality Control Skills
Standardize ruthlessly: Current SOPs, version control, and regular competency checks reduce variability.
Use the right materials: Matrix-appropriate controls at multiple levels reveal precision and accuracy issues.
Embrace external checks: Proficiency testing and peer comparison highlight blind spots.
Apply the rules: Levey-Jennings charts and Westgard-style rules for swift acceptance or rejection decisions.
Investigate well: Root cause analysis, corrective and preventive actions, and documented effectiveness checks close the loop.
Maintain equipment: Scheduled calibration and service, with records ready for any audit.
Quality management mindset: Align with recognized frameworks (e.g., ISO 15189 or equivalent) so quality isn’t a project—it’s culture.
How to Display Quality Control Skills on Your Resume
12. Immunohistochemistry
Immunohistochemistry tags proteins in tissue with specific antibodies and visual markers, revealing distribution, intensity, and cellular context.
Why It's Important
It clarifies tumor origin, subclassification, prognostic markers, and therapeutic targets—decisions that steer entire care plans.
How to Improve Immunohistochemistry Skills
Validate antibodies: Confirm specificity with positive and negative controls; avoid lot-to-lot surprises with bridging studies.
Refine protocols: Titrate primary/secondary antibodies, tweak retrieval methods, and calibrate incubation times and temperatures.
Standardize detection: Choose chromogenic vs fluorescent systems based on need; lock in consistent development times.
Automate where sensible: Automation can improve reproducibility and throughput when volumes justify it.
Quality oversight: Monitor staining intensity, background, and morphology; implement accept/reject criteria per run.
Care for tissue: Fixation time, processing, and section thickness matter—bad preanalytics doom good antibodies.
Proficiency and review: External challenges and periodic pathologist-tech huddles keep interpretations aligned.
How to Display Immunohistochemistry Skills on Your Resume
