I see you're looking to going in the lab sciences. I'm a Histotechnologist, and while I work on the Anatomic Pathology side (rather than the Clinical Pathology you'd be working on) of the lab, I went to school initially for Medical Laboratory Science so I have a pretty good idea of goes on in there. The hierarchy is technician, technologist, lead technologist, supervisor (of the various sections), lab manager (of Clinical or Anatomic Pathology), and then lab director (they are over everyone).
Yep, certain personalities flock to the lab, some good and some bad. However that does not mean we are not people persons. You still have to interact and form trusting relationships with your co-workers, superiors and doctors (especially them!). That requires people skills. During the interview process, they'll ask you questions that screen for this. Plus, since you don't work with patients you will only be interacting with the above same people day in day out. You can't escape them. Discord and resentment amongst the department can ruin the work ethic and quality. I saw this first hand at the laboratory of one top ten hospitals in the nation. But I digress...
If you want your day to be at least 75% or more bench work, I wouldn't go higher than a lead tech, although some supervisors are very hands on and still a lot of bench work. Beware, your job as a med tech especially in the Hematology and Clinical Chemistry sections is very automated, meaning once you put the vial into the machine you'll never see it again. You pretty much are doing quality control to make sure the test results are accurate. You will need the theory info you learned in school, but perhaps not the manual tests. It all depends where you go. There are some exceptions; in Microbiology you do streak the culture plates, and the HLA dept.(transplant) consists of very hands on work. If you are a very hands on technical person, you might like Histology which is making stained slides of biopsy/excised tissue specimens. Or if you like looking through the microscope, screening slides you might like Cytology.
As for job prospects, it really depends on what area of the country you are in but in general you will not have a problem finding a job as a Medical Technologist, even as a new grad because unlike nursing (wait for it...) people in general don't know about the professions in the lab. Heck, it's hard to explain what I do to people when they ask what do you do for a living without making their eyes glaze over. When you decide what to do, try to get your first job in a hospital, a teaching hospital if possible. It is far more valuable TRUST ME! Reference labs by reputation get you into a slump that hospitals labs seem to think you can't break. Don't know whether it's true, but I do know that it is harder to go from a reference lab to a hospital than the other way around. I assume it's the same with nursing going from a doctor's office to acute care.
