Eric Schwartz's answers

Be passionate about what you do, skilled at doing it, and interested in how people can actually use it to get their job done.

Be passionate and excited about not only what you do now, but what you can learn in the future. If you're the sort of person who will learn everything there is to know about a topic because you need it for work, you're much less likely to get hired than if you decided to teach yourself Erlang because you got bored last weekend....

Be passionate about your job, and enjoy helping others. A service-oriented attitude is a must; what's important is that your customer (internal or external) is satisfied-- whether or not you are able to do that is not what matter.