LO
Phlebotomist — skills, knowledge and links
Where this job sits in the official classifications, what those classifications say it demands, and what it connects to. Every block names its source: our own judgements, the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET, or the U.S. Department of Education.
How it connects#
O*NET also lists (no page here yet): Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologists · Cardiovascular Technologists and Technicians · Histotechnologists · Surgical Technologists · Surgical Assistants · Histology Technicians
In the official classification#
Phlebotomists
Fit with this page: same job
Job Zone 3: medium preparation
See it on O*NET OnLine ↗In Europe, internationally and in Singapore
Personal care workers in health services not elsewhere classified
Fit with this page: broader than this page
no match
SSOC 2024 has no phlebotomist occupation; the nearest code is a catch-all for other personal care workers in health services, which does not describe drawing blood.
What O*NET rates highest#
From O*NET 31-9097.00 (Phlebotomists). Ordered by O*NET's importance rating; the words are O*NET's own scale anchors.
Transferable skills
- Service OrientationVery important
- Social PerceptivenessVery important
- CoordinationImportant
- InstructingImportant
- Complex Problem SolvingImportant
- Judgment and Decision MakingImportant
- Time ManagementImportant
- Quality Control AnalysisImportant
Knowledge
- Customer and Personal ServiceVery important
- English LanguageVery important
- AdministrativeVery important
- Education and TrainingImportant
- Computers and ElectronicsImportant
- Public Safety and SecurityImportant
Work activities
- Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or SubordinatesVery important
- Assisting and Caring for OthersVery important
- Working with ComputersVery important
- Documenting/Recording InformationVery important
- Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal RelationshipsVery important
- Getting InformationVery important
Abilities
- Near VisionVery important
- Oral ComprehensionVery important
- Oral ExpressionVery important
- Problem SensitivityVery important
- Arm-Hand SteadinessVery important
- Written ComprehensionVery important
Essential skills
- SpeakingVery important
- Active ListeningImportant
- Critical ThinkingImportant
- Reading ComprehensionImportant
- MonitoringImportant
Each task in O*NET's terms#
O*NET describes work as detailed activities. Each of this page's 4 tasks is matched only against the activities O*NET lists for this occupation, with a stated fit; 4 match at least one. The alignment and its fit are this site's judgement, made task by task by its AI agent (Claude) on 2026-09-26; O*NET does not align tasks like ours. The activity names are O*NET's, the translations ours.
- Identifying patients and labelling samplesVerify accuracy of patient information.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Processing Information · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Pharmacist · Pharmacy technicianMaintain medical records.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Documenting/Recording Information · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Massage therapist
- Drawing bloodCollect biological specimens from patients.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Handling and Moving Objects · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Medical assistant
- Handling and processing specimensPrepare biological specimens for laboratory analysis.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Handling and Moving Objects · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Medical laboratory technicianTransport biological or other medical materials.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Performing General Physical Activities · O*NET 31.0
- Caring for patients during the drawMonitor patients to detect health problems.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Monitoring Processes, Materials, or Surroundings · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Care worker
Tasks O*NET proposes to add#
O*NET's analysts propose new or reworded task statements for future data collection, drawing on what surveyed workers write in, research into new technologies and professional associations. They are candidates, not yet part of the rated task list, and they say nothing about whether automation is involved. This site does not fold them into its own task judgements.
- Track and respond to patient vital signs for conditions such as hypotension and hypoglycemia.New task · 2026-08 · from occupational experts · O*NET 31.0
Our task judgements#
O*NET says what this job demands. It does not say what automation is doing to it — that is what this site's 4 task judgements are for: 2 backed by a verified event, 2 platform inference. VOLO judgement
Sources and rules#
- Each block says where it comes from: this site's own judgements, O*NET, the U.S. Department of Education's CIP–SOC crosswalk, the European ESCO classification and its official crosswalk to O*NET, the ILO's ISCO-08, Singapore's SSOC 2024, or something computed mechanically from those. Nothing on this page is a rating we made up.
- O*NET's importance ratings are used only to order and shorten the lists. They are never combined with this site's impact index or evidence counts.
- The fit between our page and an O*NET occupation is our judgement and is stated per code: same job, broader, part of it, or only the closest there is.
- The ESCO and ISCO-08 fits are derived mechanically from the official ESCO–O*NET crosswalk; where we override it, we say why in our data (for example, the crosswalk pairs radiologists with radiographers, which is a different job). The SSOC 2024 fit is our reading of the Singapore Department of Statistics' own titles and definitions. Official names are shown as their publishers write them; we do not translate them.
- Each task is matched only against the detailed work activities O*NET lists for the codes this page maps to. Where nothing fits, the page says why instead of forcing a match: work O*NET does not describe yet (used only for tasks we judge to be emerging), or nothing in O*NET's list for this occupation. An alignment never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
- Rules are read only from this site's verified records. A rule's official name must appear word for word in a record that reads it, so no name is made up; a policy mandate is read only as 'must', 'must not' or 'funds', because 'should' and 'in principle' are not a mandate. Reading a rule never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
- How these pieces fit together — objects, links and the actions that change them — is drawn as one diagram: The VOLO ontology
- ESCO (European Commission), occupation records from the ESCO API; CC BY 4.0. ESCO–O*NET crosswalk, ESCO Secretariat with the U.S. Department of Labor/ETA, version 1 (Sep 2022), O*NET-SOC 2019 ↔ ESCO v1.1.0; CC BY 4.0. Singapore Department of Statistics, Singapore Standard Occupational Classification 2024 and its correspondence with ISCO-08.
- O*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026 release, U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration, CC BY 4.0. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. The translations of O*NET descriptors on this page are ours, not O*NET's.