"I can haz dream Job? My rezumez! let me showz u thm"

That's the subject line of a cover letter sent by a job applicant to I Can Has Cheezburger, one of the premier sites for so-called Lolcat pictures.

Don't think the letter will be rejected out of hand - bad spelling is no obstacle to a job in Lolcat world. It may even be an asset.

Lolcats became an internet craze last year. According to Wikipedia, a Lolcat is an image combining a photograph of an animal, most frequently a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English - a dialect which is known as "Kitty Pidgin", "lolspeak", or Lolcat.

Forget coming up with a new killer app -- the most profitable tech job right now has to be video. You got studio Lionsgate signing an iTunes distribution deal with Apple, existing old-media and online powerhouses building out video content creation studios, and everyone from Viacom to Myspace hoping to create Youtube-killers. Anyone who can help post Flash video should be able to write their own ticket on either coast.

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.

As a rule of thumb, if you can't pitch your company in ten slides or pitch yourself in one page, your idea is stupid and you suck, respectively.

Tech companies are notorious for t-shirts-and-jeans dress codes, but whether this is appropriate dress for an interview depends on the position and on the interviewer (it might just be your luck that the interviewer recently joined from another organization that had a much stricter dress code). A good rule of thumb is to dress one level above the company norm: for example, for a t-shirt style company, wear a collared polo shirt. If in doubt, ask what's appropriate for the interview.

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

Biotechnology has been around for centuries. From farming to food production and storage, biotechnology has touched our lives in numerous helpful ways.

As baby boomers age, there has been an increased demand for new medical procedures and equipment. As a result, biomedical engineering, a field that combines medicine with engineering and biology, is expected to grow in the next decade and beyond.

With an insight into both medical and engineering fields, biomedical engineers work effectively in hospitals, research facilities, academia, government regulatory agencies or as consultants.

Biomechanics, which applies biomechanical engineering to biological or medical problems, utilizes scientific principles to produce new ways of keeping the body functional and healthy. These include the creation of synthetic organs and joints, as well as machines that control body functions, imaging systems like X-ray and ultrasound, and the laser systems used in corrective eye surgery.

"We don't think doing things in India is a loss to the U.S.," said N.R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies Ltd., an industry leader in outsourced software services. Nor, he said, does he think doing things in the United States is a loss for India. Almost two-thirds of Infosys' revenue is generated in the U.S. market.

Murthy, 59, is lobbying students at the Stanford Business School, where he is a member of the advisory council, to come east - way east - to Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley. With its Microsoft-like campus, Infosys provides support to big U.S. companies like Best Buy, Circuit City and even Microsoft. (Microsoft is a parent company of MSNBC.com.)

"To add significant value to corporations from a country like India is an exciting opportunity," Murthy said, "and to be part of that opportunity is one of a kind."

Infosys' profits are three times those of its U.S. competitors. One of the main reasons is salaries. The employees here - the software engineers - make about a quarter of the salary of someone doing the same job in the United States.

Google, not surprisingly, is one of the best-known exponents. Every Google employee can create a blog and contribute to internal wikis. Social technologies play an essential role in keeping the creative juices flowing and also help Google keep track of its rapidly growing numbers of ideas, projects and employees.

The laid-back atmosphere of the Googleplex might seem light years away from the dark-suited City of London. But Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DKW), the investment bank, is also a believer in the brave new world of wikis and blogs.

"We recognised early on that these tools would allow us to collaborate more effectively than existing technologies," says JP Rangaswami, chief information officer at DKW.

More than 450 DKW employees have internal blogs and the bank has built an internal wiki with more than 2,000 pages which is used by a quarter of its workforce. After just six months, the traffic on the wiki exceeds that on the entire DKW intranet. Rangaswami says one of the most popular uses for the wiki is to create meeting agendas, a task fraught with political pitfalls. "Using wikis is much more participative and non-threatening, as people can see what other people have suggested."

The aerospace industry is loaded with workers from the baby boom generation who watched man’s first steps on the moon on live television. The average worker is 48, and experts are calling the impending wave of retirements a gathering storm.

Thousands of technical jobs will need to be filled by children now in school, and students are steering away from math- and science-based careers.

Former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who was lauded during a symposium luncheon Wednesday, is so concerned about the problem that he has penned two books aimed at turning children's eyes skyward.

"They may not reach for the moon, but I'm sure they'll reach for something," said Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon in 1969.

In late 2004, Stephen Gillett was in the running for a choice job at Yahoo! - a senior management position in engineering. He was a strong contender. Gillett had been responsible for CNET's backend, and he had helped launch a number of successful startups. But he had an additional qualification his prospective employer wasn't aware of, one that gave him a decisive edge: He was one of the top guild masters in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft.

***

In this way, the process of becoming an effective World of Warcraft guild master amounts to a total-immersion course in leadership. A guild is a collection of players who come together to share knowledge, resources, and manpower. To run a large one, a guild master must be adept at many skills: attracting, evaluating, and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and adjudicating disputes. Guilds routinely splinter over petty squabbles and other basic failures of management; the master must resolve them without losing valuable members, who can easily quit and join a rival guild. Never mind the virtual surroundings; these conditions provide real-world training a manager can apply directly in the workplace.

And that's exactly what Gillett is doing. He accepted Yahoo!'s offer and now works there as senior director of engineering operations. "I used to worry about not having what I needed to get a job done," he says. "Now I think of it like a quest; by being willing to improvise, I can usually find the people and resources I need to accomplish the task." His story - translating experience in the virtual world into success in the real one - is bound to become more common as the gaming audience explodes and gameplay becomes more sophisticated. The day may not be far off when companies receive resumes that include a line reading "level 60 tauren shaman in World of Warcraft."

What is the most important factor that will influence executive pay and hiring in the technology industry this coming year? Is it globalization? Data management? Business process improvement? No. None of the above. It's Google. Failure of a company to factor in how Google will influence its own bottom line could well lead to its premature demise, according to a new survey just released by New York City-based headhunting firm Christian & Timbers.

"If your company does not have an eye on Google or globalization, your company won't make it to 2010," Umesh Ramakrishnan, vice chairman of performance-based executive search firm Christian & Timbers, told the E-Commerce Times, "and the executives who understand these dynamic market forces are in high demand."

There's continued demand for people with information security skills, say Symons and others. And even though long-term demand is expected to remain strong, the growing ranks of people who have obtained IT security certifications has had a short-term dampening effect on compensation.

David Foote, principal and chief research officer at Foote Partners LLC in New Canaan, Conn., says there has been strong demand for people with Cisco security skills as well as those with IT auditing certifications. Still, he says, compensation for security skills has tapered off in recent months as many unemployed and underemployed IT workers have obtained security skills to become more marketable. The resulting increase in security specialists has helped to deflate wages, at least in the short term, says Foote.

Dice's Melland says he's starting to see skills shortages in different geographies, including a need for network security experience and government security clearances. To meet its own changing business requirements, NStar is adjusting its skill mix of full-time IT workers and contractors through attrition, new hires and retraining, says Zimon. High on its list are security analysts because NStar is in the final throes of a four-year effort to create a team of security and risk management specialists.

There's a lot of talk about developer jobs being sent overseas, but "most of the stuff that's going offshore is low-level coding jobs," says Craig Symons, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass.

The majority of the technology adopted by businesses in the future will have its roots in the consumer market, said analyst Gartner which also believes that companies will soon start encouraging employees to purchase their own PCs.

In a research note released last week, Businesses Need to Explore Consumer Technology Before the Next Internet Revolution Leaves Them Behind, the analyst group claims that while traditional enterprise software remains critical, many functions can be accomplished through technologies designed for consumers.

Applications that are making inroads into enterprises include the Google Desktop, AOL IM, and Skype's voice-over-IP software, Gartner said.

Good technical skills won't be enough for workers who want to hold onto their jobs in IT, as staff need to show off new business skills to attract employers.

Scepticism about the effectiveness of IT, increasing automation and offshoring will lead to the emergence of a new breed of IT professionals who combine technical aptitude, local knowledge, knowledge of industry processes and leadership ability, according to analyst Gartner.

Workers will have to prove they understand the realities of the business, such as industry and customer issues and regulation, as three out of five will have business-facing roles within five years.

Diane Morello, vice president of research at Gartner, said in a statement: "Some will be bolstered, some will be carved up, some will be redistributed and some will be displaced."

Technology infrastructure and services. Opportunities in technology infrastructure and services, the foundation of the IT profession, will grow in service, hardware and software vendors-many in developing economies-and wane in user companies. Network design will remain strong everywhere.

Information design and management. Business intelligence, online consumer services, work enhancement initiatives, search-and-retrieval practices and collaboration all will grow in user companies, systems integrators and consulting companies. Linguistics, language skills, business and cultural knowledge, and knowledge management will be fertile ground.

Process design and management. IT professionals can look at process opportunities from three angles: competitive business processes, design of process automation and operational processes. The first will be the "sweet spot" for companies; the second, for software vendors; the third, for outsourcing vendors.

Relationship and sourcing management. Far removed from the traditional skills that IT professionals pursue, relationship and sourcing management will gain ground, demanding strengths in managing intangibles and managing geographically distributed parties with different work outcomes and cultures.

1. Tissue Engineers
2. Gene Programmers
3. Pharmers
4. Frankenfood Monitors
5. Data Miners
6. Hot-Line Handymen
7. Virtual Reality Actors
8. Narrowcasters
9. Turing Testers
10. Knowledge Engineers

Terms such as jpeg, javascript and cookies are among the problem words highlighted by firm Computer People.

The recruiter, which questioned 1,500 workers, says effective technology professionals "understand the need to tailor their levels of jargon".

The findings revealed that younger workers were just as likely to make a mistake over computer language.

Just under two thirds had sent e-mails with large attachments which had blocked clients' systems.

More than one in four people are not sure what a firewall does, tempting them to turn it off.

Turning off firewall - software to protect computers against hackers - is the worst course of action to take, according to IT experts.

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.