Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a quality control chemist and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A quality control chemist utilizes chemistry laboratory skills to test and measure different types of products and materials for quality purposes more so in the pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries. He/she works to ensure that all performed laboratory experiments are undertaken in line with the laid down standard operating practices, good laboratory, and clinical practices.
In addition, he/she performs other stipulated duties that include; validating instrumentation and experiments, preparing and testing various lab samples, perform minor equipment troubleshooting and overall maintenance of the lab environment and equipment. He/she also ensures that all lab users observe all the lab rules accordingly and that nothing is stamped.
Core Skills Required to be a Quality Control Chemist
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A quality control chemist should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Troubleshooting:
Troubleshooting is solving a problem or determining a question to an issue which is often applied to repairing failed products or processes on a machine or a system.
A Quality Control Chemist must be able to diagnose any trouble in the management flow caused by a failure of any kind and determine to remedy the causes of the symptoms with the final product being the confirmation that the solution restores the process to an excellent working state.
Giving Feedback:
Giving Feedback is one of the most powerful tools to develop employees and improve performance through honest feedback of the work done best and areas that need improvement.
A Quality Control Chemist should be skilled in giving out both praise and criticism in a wise way to occasionally show workers where they need to improve and providing them with an observer's insight into the progress of their performance.
Participative Management:
Participative Management is also known as employee involvement is the participation of all stakeholders at all levels of the organization in the investigation of problems, development of strategies and implementation of solutions.
A Quality Control Chemist should include the participative management in the enterprise to create open and honest communication, freedom and transparency solicit survey feedback and form self-managed teams that are easy to work with.
Cooperation with colleagues:
Cooperation is the process of working with groups or teams for a common mutual benefit as opposed to working in competition or for selfish ambition.
A Quality Control Chemist should learn the art of creating a mutually beneficial exchange among the employees that dwells much on cooperation for the same mutual benefit with adequate resources for all to use rather than creating a spirit of competition.
Monitoring Others:
Monitoring others is tracking employee activities monitor the worker engagement with the workplace-related tasks.
A Quality Control Chemist should always monitor his workers to measure productivity, track attendance, incoming and outgoing phone calls, safety spying, employee theft, employee's location, horseplay and collect proof of hours worked using the latest computer detective monitoring system that provides accurate data that cannot be debated.
Persistence:
Persistence is the refusal to give up or let go of a firm or obstinate continuous course of action despite difficulties or opposition that you may face.
A Quality Control Chemist should strongly emphasize the need for persistence as the fundamental difference between a successful outcome and a failed one while developing this important quality in each creating happy employees and business.
Using Common Sense:
Using Common Sense is the ability to see what is missing in a situation or a project and supplying it without necessarily being assigned or asked to do it.
A Quality Control Chemist needs to creatively train his employees always to see the missing element that is typically crucial in any workplace or project and take the opportunity to do business out of it.
Quality of Work:
The quality of Work is the value of work or products produced by the employees as well as the work environment they are provided with.
A Quality Control Chemist needs creativity in assisting all teams in identifying characteristics that will result in a quality product and lead to greater efficiency and increased productivity by following the four critical outcomes of employee retention, customer satisfaction, profitability, and productivity.
Business Ethics:
Business Ethics is the ability to learn what is right and wrong in the world of business and choosing to do what is right at all times.
A Quality Control Chemist must emulate good business ethic that is essential for the long-term success of an organization by implementing an ethical program that will foster a thriving entrepreneurial culture while increasing profitability and personal maturity.
Technology Savvy:
Technology Savvy is the introduction of the digital technology in the workplace as a strategy to make tasks run swiftly against doing them manually.
A Quality Control Chemist must ensure that the technology he introduces to the workplace integrated seamlessly with the workflow and empowers the users rather than complicates and damages the workflow making sure the employees are well prepared and not overwhelmed with the technology.
Hard Skills Required to be a Quality Control Chemist
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A quality control chemist should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.