Which skills are hot?

I am getting ready to enter

I am getting ready to enter the field, I have been reading some of these comments, I will tell you, I do know that healthcare, and consulting is hot right now, and I work in the heathcare field for a major insurance company. I am trying to debate if i want to do Network or computer programming. Which one is good for Software Engineering?

David, thank you for the

David, thank you for the detailed response. To clarify about the tech "soft" and business skills. My original degree is in Mechanical Engineering from a European university that I obtained 20 years ago. Coincidentally, I got involved in the IT side of the profession during my education process and never really used my education directly in my career.

My greatest strength is process development, if that makes sense. For example, I am good at definition of customized development process flow that makes sense for "that" particular business, despite the standard practices, you have to customize based on business dynamics, demand and staff.

I understand "end user mind set". My most recent involvement is in SOX (in addition to my project management responsibilities) where I had to, once again, create a customized process which also complies with the essential SOX requirements and rules (there was no staff added to facilitate this implementation).

On the tech "soft" side, I have beginner's SQL. I come from a .jsp and PowerBuilder environment in a facilities maintenance industry (company responsible for enginering trades for customers throughout the US), where I spent 9 years as a "jack of all trades", i.e. application support for internal users, business analysis, project management, QA, tech, training and tech writing, along with management of development staff.

Amongst many other IT professionals at that time, I got layed off in 2003. Thirteen months later, I found employment at a start up company that had nothing to do with my business specific expertise as well as other "soft" skills. The company ceased to exist 9 months later. Two months later I ended up at a large and famous distribution company running on ERP and ColdFusion, again, nothing to do with my previous expertise business and technology wise (though the company was fully aware that I didn't have experience in that specific industry).

I have a team of developers, qa and app. support staff in my direct responsibility. During the past year, I focused on institution of formal SDLC practices, project scheduling/management, SOX, and team building. As you can tell, I am extremely adaptable, and have enough technical savvy to do what I do even without hands-on development experiense. However, in light of the two employment fiasco's during the past 3 years, I want to ensure I strenghten my position to avoid that happening in the future. I believe it's important to mention that I am a 45 yo female and, as I mentioned before, have a foreign education.

Any suggestions on how I should approach my own development to continue to grow my professional potential and security? I am not sure that PMP would be the most important need at this time. Are you?

What about the newbees? How

What about the newbees? How should they market themselves in this fierce competition? Would a PMP help marketing themselves in Quality Assurance/Software Testing world? Are there any other certifications helpful for newbee testers to differ from rest? Is there anything else they should do to market themselves and stand out from the rest? I appreciate any kind of advice related to "newbee-QA-job-search" sittuation. Thank you.