Best Jobs For Former Laboratory Technicians [2023]

It’s tough to be a laboratory technician nowadays, and more and more of them are losing confidence in their own profession.

While the amount of people majoring in courses preparing people for a job as a laboratory technician isn’t necessarily dropping, fewer and fewer people are applying to become laboratory technicians in the first place and the workforce itself is looking grim.

With so many laboratory technicians no longer sticking around, this begs the question:

What are they all doing now?

We were curious, so we looked through the resumes of former laboratory technicians to see what kind of jobs they were moving into after leaving the field. There were thousands of answers, so we made the cutoff at the top 100 jobs.

But given that there are some very surprising and interesting items on this list, we’ve decided to highlight a few of those instead.

Best Jobs For Former LABORATORY TECHNICIANS

Some of these items are admittedly more attractive than one another as far as actually working the job goes, but one way or another, you’ve got to admit they’re eye-catching.

The full list of those jobs can be found below.

Detailed Ranking of the Most Common Jobs of Former LABORATORY TECHNICIANS

Rank	Job Title	%
1	Research Assistant	1.59%
2	Chemist	1.13%
3	Research Associate	1.01%
4	Scientist	1.0%
5	Sales Associate	0.8%
6	Customer Service Representative	0.74%
7	Internship	0.74%
8	Associate Scientist	0.73%
9	Medical Technologist	0.71%
10	Technician	0.7%
11	Laboratory Manager	0.65%
12	Registered Nurse	0.64%
13	Laboratory Assistant	0.56%
14	Graduate Research Assistant	0.56%
15	Medical Laboratory Technician	0.54%
16	Laboratory Supervisor	0.53%
17	Phlebotomist	0.52%
18	Quality Laboratory Technician	0.52%
19	Laboratory Analyst	0.51%
20	Medical Assistant	0.48%
21	Manager	0.48%
22	Engineering Technician	0.45%
23	Quality Control Technician	0.45%
24	Project Manager	0.43%
25	Teaching Assistant	0.43%
26	Research Technician	0.42%
27	Manufacturing Technician	0.42%
28	Administrative Assistant	0.42%
29	Machine Operator	0.42%
30	Senior Laboratory Technician	0.42%
31	Research Scientist	0.4%
32	Pharmacist Technician	0.39%
33	Volunteer	0.39%
34	Analytical Chemist	0.38%
35	Quality Assurance Technician	0.37%
36	Team Leader	0.36%
37	Clinical Laboratory Scientist	0.36%
38	Office Manager	0.35%
39	Supervisor	0.34%
40	Process Engineer	0.34%
41	Microbiologist	0.33%
42	Cashier	0.32%
43	Analyst	0.31%
44	Quality Control	0.31%
45	Teacher	0.31%
46	Owner	0.3%
47	Associate	0.3%
48	Substitute Teacher	0.29%
49	Consultant	0.28%
50	Senior Scientist	0.28%
51	Field Service Technician	0.27%
52	Quality Assurance	0.27%
53	Quality Assurance Specialist	0.26%
54	Assistant Manager	0.26%
55	Field Technician	0.25%
56	Quality Assurance Manager	0.25%
57	Quality Control Analyst	0.25%
58	Service Technician	0.24%
59	Research And Development Technician	0.23%
60	Quality Engineer	0.23%
61	Operations Manager	0.23%
62	Quality Control Chemist	0.23%
63	Sales Representative	0.23%
64	Server	0.23%
65	Office Assistant	0.22%
66	Specialist	0.22%
67	Quality Control Inspector	0.22%
68	Production Supervisor	0.22%
69	Graduate Assistant	0.22%
70	Manufacturing Associate	0.21%
71	Technical Support Specialist	0.21%
72	Certified Nursing Assistant	0.21%
73	Research Laboratory Technician	0.2%
74	Coordinator	0.2%
75	Lead Laboratory Technician	0.2%
76	Environmental Scientist	0.2%
77	Electronics Technician	0.19%
78	Production Technician	0.19%
79	Physician Assistant	0.19%
80	Computer Technician	0.19%
81	Instructor	0.19%
82	Adjunct Professor	0.19%
83	Senior Technologist	0.19%
84	Maintenance Technician	0.19%
85	Operator	0.18%
86	Process Technician	0.18%
87	Quality Control Manager	0.17%
88	Receptionist	0.17%
89	Graduate Researcher	0.17%
90	Manufacturing Engineer	0.17%
91	Tutor	0.16%
92	Histologic Technician	0.16%
93	Data Analyst	0.16%
94	Technical Support Technician	0.16%
95	Science Teacher	0.16%
96	Security Officer	0.16%
97	Research And Development Chemist	0.16%
98	Engineer	0.16%
99	Senior Chemist	0.16%
100	Engineering Internship	0.16%

Most Common Jobs For Former LABORATORY TECHNICIANS

These are all good jobs, all of them either utilizing some skill that a laboratory technician would have or being a stepping stone to a different career.

Here’s the thing about these jobs though — they’re pretty much exactly what you’d expect a lot of former laboratory technicians to do.

How We Determined the Best Jobs of Former LABORATORY TECHNICIANS

Using resume information from our database of over 7 million resumes, we looked at all resumes that listed laboratory technician under their work history. Then we looked at which jobs showed up on their work histories following their stints as a laboratory technician, sorting them by their most frequent.

That’s how we made the initial ranked list.

To make our list of most interesting jobs, we looked through the ranked list to see if any positions:

Showed up in fewer than 1% of all new jobs
And, were not part of the 100 most common jobs in our database

Author

Chris Kolmar

Chris Kolmar is a co-founder of Zippia and the editor-in-chief of the Zippia career advice blog. He has hired over 50 people in his career, been hired five times, and wants to help you land your next job. His research has been featured on the New York Times, Thrillist, VOX, The Atlantic, and a host of local news. More recently, he's been quoted on USA Today, BusinessInsider, and CNBC.

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