Are you a talented regulatory compliance supervisor in a high-tech field? Maybe you're a top-notch network engineer.

If so, we should talk.

Not about your job. Because your job sounds, frankly, pretty boring.

I'm not even sure what you do all day, let alone why anyone would pay gobs of money for it.

Despite a network of highly placed sources in the business world, I was unable to determine, for instance, what an application support technician is. All I know is that there's a critical shortage of them.

Anyone who reads a morning newspaper knows there is a critical shortage of qualified candidates "impacting" every job field in America.

At last count, there weren't enough teachers, priests, architects, farmers, truck drivers, nurses, pharmacists, scientists, programmers, engineers, manufacturing workers, or Green Bay Packers who can block and/or tackle.

And it ain't getting any better, says Bill Styring of the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Styring points out that the ratio of U.S. workers to retirees has been 4 to 1 for the past three decades. But with 76 million baby boomers ready to cash in, the ratio will be 2 to 1 by 2030.

Besides being way too much math for a Monday morning, the numbers are striking.

"That's a demographic fact that business needs to deal with," Styring told www .inc.com. "The population of available workers is going to implode like you wouldn't believe."

That's why I've decided to enter the high-stakes world of corporate headhunting.

The decision came about one-fifth of a nanosecond after my friend Sarah Ryse told me she'll pay $500 for each successful job candidate I send her way.

Ryse does public relations for Norlight Telecommunications in Milwaukee, which, I'm mostly sure, is a company of some sort.

The folks at Norlight are so badly in need of high-tech workers, they are willing to pay anybody who helps them fill openings. Not just pros. Anybody.

Debbie Mancini in West Des Moines has hunted high-tech heads since the late '80s, including times when the dot-com boom was gobbling up anyone with a pocket protector. When the job market was really tight, she'd slip a "finder's fee" to friends who helped her reel in a big fish.

"I didn't care who it went to," she told Workbytes. "I'd give them $1,000. Why not?"

Why not, indeed.

Experts agree that such bonuses are common in head-hunting circles. But WorkBytes could find no other example of a company making such a public offer.

Trina Jashinsky, vice president of human resources at Norlight, acknowledged the strategy is unusual but "We appreciate the competitive environment we're trying to recruit within."

"More and more, recruiting has become a function of networking, and we want to take advantage of others' knowledge of qualified candidates, as well as their entrepreneurial spirit," she said.

The bottom line is this: For 500 bucks, I will not only find a qualified candidate, I'll type her resume, drive her to the interview, and hold her coat in the lobby until it's over.

If you're one of the best darn application support technicians in the greater Des Moines metro area or any of its forcibly annexed colonies, you should give me a call.

Especially if you're dissatisfied with your current employment situation. (And what are the odds? I mean, you're an applications support technician, for crying out loud.)