Most lab technician CVs read like an equipment inventory. There is a long column of instrument names, a degree, a list of employers, and nothing that tells a hiring manager whether you can hold their bench on a Tuesday with two people off sick. The fix is deciding which lab you are writing for and letting that decision shape every line.
Use the job title the reader is hiring for
The same bench work goes by different names depending on the country and the sector. In industry and research you will usually see laboratory technician, lab technician or lab assistant, and "assistant" often means a role built around preparation, glassware, stock and sample reception rather than running assays. Clinical and hospital labs use different words. In the UK the protected title is typically biomedical scientist, while in the US you will often see medical laboratory scientist and medical laboratory technician as two separate grades. The rules differ by country, so check them before you borrow a title you may not be entitled to use.
On the CV, keep your real job title on each role. If your employer called you "Analyst I" and the posting says "QC Laboratory Technician", leave the job name alone and let the summary do the bridging: "Laboratory technician with four years in pharmaceutical QC, running HPLC release testing under GMP." That sentence speaks the reader's vocabulary while your history stays accurate. When a title depends on a professional registration, the question of where that registration sits on the page is covered in our guide to professional registration on a CV.
Let the type of lab decide what goes first
A hospital biochemistry department and a university cell biology group both ask for "lab experience", but they read for very different things. Before you write a single bullet, decide which one you are applying to.
- Clinical and hospital labs care about patient samples, turnaround, analyser maintenance, internal quality control and escalating urgent results. Lead with the departments you have covered, such as haematology, biochemistry, microbiology or blood transfusion, and the analyser platforms by type.
- Pharma and QC labs care about release and stability testing, deviations, out-of-specification investigations and data integrity. Lead with the testing you have signed off and the records you own.
- Food and environmental testing cares about accredited methods, sample volumes, matrices like water, soil or food, and client deadlines. Lead with matrices and methods.
- Research and university labs care about technique range, independence, troubleshooting and the unglamorous work of keeping a lab running: ordering, equipment booking, inducting new students.
- Industrial labs in materials, chemicals or manufacturing care about process support and how quickly a production sample becomes a decision on the line.
You can be strong in two of these. You cannot write one CV that leads with all five. Keep a master version with everything in it, and cut a tailored copy per sector so the top third of the page speaks the reader's language.
List techniques by family, and only the ones you can run
The skills section is where lab CVs usually go wrong. Candidates list every technique they have watched once, and the interviewer, quite reasonably, picks the weakest one to ask about. Group what you know by family and be honest about depth.
A clean structure might look like this:
- Molecular: PCR, qPCR, DNA and RNA extraction, gel electrophoresis
- Separation and wet chemistry: HPLC, GC, titration, Karl Fischer
- Spectroscopy: UV-Vis spectrophotometry, FTIR
- Cell work and microbiology: aseptic technique, cell culture, plate counts, microscopy
- Clinical analysers: chemistry and immunoassay platforms, haematology counters
These are examples, not a checklist. Swap in what you actually use. If you have run a method independently, list it. If you have only assisted, either leave it off or say so plainly in a bullet, for instance "supported method transfer for a GC assay". A short list is forgivable. A long list with a hole in it gets found in the interview.
Then put those techniques to work inside the experience bullets, which is where they carry weight. "Ran HPLC" is a skill. "Ran HPLC assay and impurity testing on around 30 batches a month for release, with no data integrity findings across two internal audits" is evidence. The figures in that example are illustrative, so use your own. If you never counted, a careful estimate marked "around" beats an adjective like "high-volume".
Quality systems, LIMS and audit readiness
This is the part that separates a technician who follows a method from one who can be trusted alone on a weekend. Name the quality framework you have worked under, because hiring managers and recruiters search for it. Common examples are GLP for non-clinical safety studies, GMP for pharmaceutical manufacturing and QC, ISO/IEC 17025 for testing and calibration labs and ISO 15189 for medical labs. Which one applies depends on the sector and the country, so only claim the frameworks you have actually worked inside.
Then show what you did under it. Strong lines tend to cover some of the following:
- writing or revising SOPs, and training colleagues on them
- raising and closing deviations or nonconformances
- equipment qualification, calibration and maintenance logs
- preparing for internal or external audits, and the part you presented
- LIMS work: sample registration, result entry, review and release
Describe the LIMS by function rather than leaning on a product name your next employer may not run. "Entered and reviewed results in LIMS, with second-person verification of out-of-trend data" works anywhere. If you hold formal training certificates, a GMP course or a biosafety course for example, they belong in a short certifications block. The general rules for that block are in our article on certifications on a CV, so keep the list tight here.
Turnaround earns one line if you are applying to a clinical or contract lab. "Kept routine chemistry within target turnaround on nights, covering the analyser bench alone" says much more than "fast and accurate".
Safety, shifts and the move from academic to industrial labs
Safety rarely gets space on a lab CV, and it should. A line on chemical and biological hazard handling, waste segregation, spill response or biosafety cabinet use tells the reader you will not be the source of the next incident report. If you were the lab's safety representative or kept the waste log, say so.
Clinical labs and some manufacturing sites run around the clock. If you have worked nights, weekends or on-call, state it once in the role line in neutral terms, "rotating shifts including nights and on-call", and move on. How to present shift patterns more broadly is handled in our piece on shift work on a CV.
The jump from an academic lab to an industrial one needs its own care. A university group rewards range, curiosity and improvising when a protocol fails at eleven at night. An industrial lab rewards running the validated method the same way every time and documenting it so a colleague can repeat it. If you are making that move, rewrite your research bullets in the second language:
- not "optimised a western blot protocol", but "wrote and maintained a standard protocol used by six people in the group"
- not "independent project on bacterial growth", but "ran a scheduled testing plan, tracked samples and kept the lab notebook audit-ready"
If you are moving the other way, toward a scientist role with your own research questions, the document changes shape again, and our medical researcher CV guide covers that one.
A last check before you send it
Your LinkedIn profile probably holds more history than any single CV should. A tool like Postulit can turn that profile into a first draft you then cut down for the lab type you are targeting, which saves retyping every role from scratch.
For the final pass, read the posting and mark the lab type and the quality framework it mentions. Then look at the techniques it names first, because those are usually the ones the hiring manager will test in the interview.
A technique that only appears in your skills list is a claim. The same technique inside an experience bullet, with a volume or an outcome attached, is evidence.
Open your CV now, find the two techniques the posting names first, and make sure each one appears in an experience bullet with a number next to it. Do it for one application today.