The right answers could help get you a job at Google.

Google has always wanted to hire people with straight-A report cards and double 800s on their SATs. Now, like an Ivy League school, it is starting to look for more well-rounded candidates, like those who have published books or started their own clubs.

Desperate to hire more engineers and sales representatives to staff its rapidly growing search and advertising business, Google — in typical eccentric fashion — has created an automated way to search for talent among the more than 100,000 job applications it receives each month. It is starting to ask job applicants to fill out an elaborate online survey that explores their attitudes, behavior, personality and biographical details going back to high school.

The questions range from the age when applicants first got excited about computers to whether they have ever tutored or ever established a nonprofit organization.

David Hodgson, an author of Paid to Play: An Insider's Guide to Video Game Careers, says the hours are long, the deadlines are strict, the work can be monotonous and, in the case of programmers, the pay starts at around $50,000 a year -- below that of other high-tech industries.

"It's not like working in the industry is sitting around playing video games," said Hodgson, a longtime video game journalist who wrote the book with author and game designer Bryan Stratton and career counselor Alice Rush.

The good news is that jobs can be creative, varied and rewarding, and there are as many video game careers as there are ways of breaking into the business.

"There are multiple paths, which is the best news around," said Hodgson, who gathered information for his book from 100 industry insiders with careers ranging from testing, design and sound to publishing, management, journalism, retail and professional gaming.

The most sought-after corporate IT workers in 2010 may be those with no deep-seated technical skills at all. The nuts-and-bolts programming and easy-to-document support jobs will have all gone to third-party providers in the U.S. or abroad. Instead, IT departments will be populated with "versatilists" -- those with a technology background who also know the business sector inside and out, can architect and carry out IT plans that will add business value, and can cultivate relationships both inside and outside the company.

That's the general consensus of three research groups that have studied the IT workforce landscape for 2010 -- the year that marks the culmination of the decade of the versatile workforce. What's driving these changes? Several culprits include changes in consumer behavior, an increase in corporate mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, the proliferation of mobile devices and growth in stored data.

What's more, the skills required to land these future technical roles will be honed outside of IT. Some of these skills will come from artistic talents, math excellence or even a knack for public speaking -- producing a combination of skills not commonly seen in the IT realm.

1. Web services
2. Wireless/mobile
3. Business intelligence
4. Service-oriented architecture
5. Identity management
6. Disaster recovery/ continuity planning
7. Data management/ business analytics
8. E-business
9. RFID
10. Antivirus protection

On the other hand, computer professionals face the threat of increased automation and the prospect of their jobs being shifted offshore. The average number of unemployed workers in nine high-tech categories fell by 64,000 last year but remained close to 150,000, according to the Labor Department. And in the first three months of this year, technology companies slashed nearly 60,000 U.S. jobs -- twice the number trimmed in the same period last year.