Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a biotechnician and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Biotechnician is liable for assisting the biological researchers and scientists in their duties as well as managing the lab equipment.
The essential functions of this position are providing support to biologists and other scientists in the lab and the in the field, studying the living organisms, experimenting and researching to discover new pharmaceuticals and medical treatments, improving the productivity, advancing forensic processes, developing new technologies, gathering and processing data under the control of a biological researcher, ensuring compliance with the state regulations that regulate their department, understanding and handling the lab equipment, cleaning, setting up and operating lab equipment, gathering and analyzing data in fields like biology, genetics and population.
Core Skills Required to be a Biotechnician
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 biotechnician 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 Biotechnician 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 Biotechnician 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.
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 Biotechnician 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 Biotechnician 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 Biotechnician 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.
Work Attitude:
Work Attitude is one's feelings towards and beliefs about one's job and their behavior that can tell how it feels to be there.
A Biotechnician ought to encourage his workers and provide all the requirements for the workplace to ensure a positive attitude is maintained by the employees that can help them get a promotion, succeed on projects, meet goals and enjoy the job more.
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 Biotechnician 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.
Role Awareness:
Role Awareness is the ability to be informed of your role in a given environment as well as understand the expectations placed on a position and to see how they are met apparently.
A Biotechnician must assess, measure and quantify his employee's awareness of their roles to see if they are transparent about what is required of each of them and review what kind of results they are delivering from their understanding.
Quantity of Work:
The quantity of Work is the amount of work accomplished by an employee against the expectations set by the employer.
A Biotechnician 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 Biotechnician 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 Biotechnician
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 biotechnician should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.