Medical Laboratory Specialist Overview

When it comes to the most important skills required to be a medical laboratory specialist, we found that a lot of resumes listed 14.5% of medical laboratory specialists included urinalysis, while 11.1% of resumes included body fluids, and 10.8% of resumes included hematology. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.

When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the medical laboratory specialist job title. But what industry to start with? Most medical laboratory specialists actually find jobs in the health care and government industries.

If you're interested in becoming a medical laboratory specialist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 28.7% of medical laboratory specialists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 9.3% of medical laboratory specialists have master's degrees. Even though some medical laboratory specialists have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a medical laboratory specialist. When we researched the most common majors for a medical laboratory specialist, we found that they most commonly earn associate degree degrees or bachelor's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on medical laboratory specialist resumes include master's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.

You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a medical laboratory specialist. In fact, many medical laboratory specialist jobs require experience in a role such as medical laboratory technician. Meanwhile, many medical laboratory specialists also have previous career experience in roles such as laboratory assistant or medical assistant.