Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a bioinformatics technician and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Bioinformatics Technician is responsible for applying methods and principles of bioinformatics to help scientists in areas like the pharmaceutical, medical technology, computational biology, and biotechnology to visualize, analyze and manipulate molecular data.
The principal duties of this post include analyzing and managing bioinformatics data using software packages, monitoring database performance and perform any necessary maintenance upgrades or repairs, creating data management or error checking procedures and user manuals, developing or maintaining applications that process biologically based data into searchable databases for the purposes of analysis, calculation or presentation, documenting all database changes, modifications or problems, developing or applying data mining and machine learning algorithms, designing and implementing web-based tools for querying large-scale biological databases.
Core Skills Required to be a Bioinformatics Technician
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 bioinformatics technician should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Organized Workplace:
Organized Workplace is a vital characteristic that helps the business to thrive for long term due to the sense of structure and order which efficiently promotes the team spirit.
A Bioinformatics Technician must be organized in the general organizing, planning, communication, time management, scheduling, coordinating resources and meeting deadlines to support the staff in being well structured and run the company successfully.
Urgency:
Urgency is the speed that drives businesses fast in order to keep them from disconnecting from what they are aiming to achieve but pursue it with a sense of urgency.
A Bioinformatics Technician needs to create a sense of urgency in the business by helping the staff see the need for change by taking advantage of the presented opportunities or by dealing with any issue that is holding them back.
Teamwork Skills:
Teamwork is the process of collaboratively working with a group of people with an aim to achieve a set goal within a business ensuring that the staff and management cooperate using their skills and provide constructive feedback.
A Bioinformatics Technician needs to exercise effectiveness and understanding in creating teamwork using the right techniques in an environment of trust and cooperation with the aim of increasing productivity, higher morale, and a fulfilled workforce.
Flexibility:
Flexibility is an important skill that allows employers and employees to make an arrangement about working on maintaining a work/life balance to help organizations improve the productivity and efficiency of their balance.
A Bioinformatics Technician needs creative ideas on how to plan flexible schedules for all his employees by incorporating flexible working arrangements and individual flexibility agreements that allow negotiation to change how certain agreements apply to them and how they can be adjusted.
Initiative:
An initiative is the ability to assess and initiate things independently often done without any managerial influence offered.
A Bioinformatics Technician must train his workers to take up tasks without being asked to and work on them without being supervised to a quality that is accepted by the company, therefore nurturing a skill that grows the individual and the group as well.
Orientation to Work:
Orientation to Work is the introduction that is given to a new worker whereby he is introduced to coworkers and given relevant information like schedules, performance standards, benefits and facilities, names of the supervisors, etc.
A Bioinformatics Technician must ensure that all new employees go through an orientation process to assimilate into the workplace and become familiar with what is expected of them.
Consistency and Reliability:
Consistency and Reliability are the ability to be trusted to do what you do best all the time with or without supervision and without failure to produce results.
A Bioinformatics Technician is liable to maintain a high level of consistency and reliability by engaging with employees and treating them with respect deserved which produces excellent results in various kinds of reliability coefficients.
Deadlines - On time:
Deadlines - On time is the ability to prioritize the important tasks and setting up a plan on how to work on them first to deliver within the set period.
A Bioinformatics Technician must have the art of managing deadlines by being able to prioritize the work that is set for scheduling to the workers according to how vital the projects are and how soon they need to be executed and submitted.
Quantity of Work:
The quantity of Work is the amount of work accomplished by an employee against the expectations set by the employer.
A Bioinformatics Technician should be keen to monitor an employee's job performance by comparing it to the standard work measurements that are often given at various intervals while evaluating the production to tell when to refresh a worker's skills or address any behavioral factors.
Resource Use:
Resource Use is the ability to utilize the office supplies effectively while avoiding any wastage and ensuring everything is used correctly.
A Bioinformatics Technician needs to educate his employees on the rising threat of global warming and the business's risk of high expenses to avoid wastage of any kind from copiers, computers, old filing processes and data backing disks that are sometimes misused by the employees.
Hard Skills Required to be a Bioinformatics Technician
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 bioinformatics technician should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.