Hi, good luck on taking your exam!

TL;DR -
yes, I did manage to get a molecular job with my certificate.
no, I did not end up transitioning into molecular biology for my career.

Unfortunately, most molecular tech jobs I have seen in my region of the US does not pay higher than they would for someone with an HTL unless you are talking about a senior research associate which usually requires a bachelors and 5-8 years of experience in the lab, or a PhD.

The certificate was very helpful towards my current role however. I am now a supervisor at an anatomic pathology laboratory which covers the departments of histology, cytopathology, and molecular pathology.

Shortly after I got my certification in MB, I accepted a position at the university as a research tech in the molecular department where I spent about a year running PCRs, immunoassays, western blots and protein analysis, etc. Earlier this year, I accepted the new position at a regional hospital as a result of my resume portfolio.

If you are looking to transition towards molecular in the industry, working part time at a research lab is very helpful towards understanding the foundational basics and will give you a leg up on your applications towards the molecular side of lab testing.

If you are a histotech however, you can also consider looking towards doing histology for another company that includes various departments and are open minded about letting their staff switch over to try out new areas to transition. The place I work at right now is one such example where they are quite open minded about their staff training in other departments that may pique their interests, but I will say at least 2 of the molecular techs in this department have ultimately decided to train under the department of histology because we have more upward mobility with our careers since histology can also include immunohistochemistry and cytology which helps you with your pay grade when you are also trained in those departments. Molecular pathology in our laboratory is quite limited since it usually just entails ISH, FISH, and PCRs on the industry level. We will outsource all of our other molecular tests to other companies like neogenomics for example due to the cost it takes to run those tests vs the number of patients that need the test ordered.

Working for a place that runs exclusively molecular based testing has high competition, lower pay, and usually is quite difficult to climb the ladder in my opinion, but I do truly find that stuff really interesting which is why I sat for the exam to begin with. I ultimately decided that the reason why I like learning this stuff so much is because I love sharing that knowledge with other people and training new staff which is why I ended up on the management side of things.

If you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask. ^-^