FlightWay / Careers / Medical Assistants

Healthcare

Medical Assistants

Perform administrative and certain clinical duties under the direction of a physician.

Sector: Healthcare
Preparation: Zone 3 — medium preparation needed
O*NET code: 31-9092.00

What you'll actually do

The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.

Getting Information

central to the job — rated 97/100 for importance.
Working with Computers

central to the job — rated 92/100 for importance.
Documenting/Recording Information

central to the job — rated 91/100 for importance.
Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge

central to the job — rated 90/100 for importance.
Assisting and Caring for Others

central to the job — rated 90/100 for importance.
Processing Information

central to the job — rated 87/100 for importance.

Perform administrative and certain clinical duties under the direction of a physician. Administrative duties may include scheduling appointments, maintaining medical records, billing, and coding information for insurance purposes. Clinical duties may include taking and recording vital signs and medical histories, preparing patients for examination, drawing blood, and administering medications as directed by physician.

What it takes

Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.

Skills

Social Perceptiveness

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Speaking

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Active Listening

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
Reading Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Critical Thinking

Needed at a solid working level (52/100), and rated 66/100 for importance.

Knowledge

English Language

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 95/100 for importance.
Customer and Personal Service

Needed at expert level (82/100), and rated 88/100 for importance.
Medicine and Dentistry

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 83/100 for importance.
Administrative

Needed at a high level (65/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.

Abilities

Oral Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Oral Expression

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Written Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Near Vision

Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 3 — medium preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

Vocational training, an associate degree, or equivalent on-the-job experience.

Experience

One to two years of related experience is typical.

Training

Employers expect you to arrive with the core skill already.

What it pays

These are typical healthcare compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Medical Assistants specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.

Mayo Clinic · Johns Hopkins

$130k – $300k

Regional Health Systems

$100k – $180k

Clinics & Private Practice

$80k – $130k

How the work tends to run

Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.

Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
You are in front of the public, so the job is partly performance.From “Performing for or Working Directly with the Public”
You own decisions rather than execute someone else’s.From “Making Decisions and Solving Problems”
Rules and standards are checkable and someone checks them.From “Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards”
People depend on you directly, and that is the point of the role.From “Assisting and Caring for Others”

How FlightWay scores your fit against this

No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.

1. You answer a short quiz: Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
2. We correlate the two profiles: Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Medical Assistants. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
3. The number you see is personality fit only: "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
4. Every factor is visible: You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.

More in Healthcare

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See your fit for Medical Assistants

Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Medical Assistants and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.

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Occupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.