(FORTUNE Magazine) – DEAR ANNIE: How does one become a venture capitalist? I have an MBA and am now working in mergers and acquisitions at an investment bank, but what I'd really like to do is get into the venture capital business. What are venture capital firms looking for? How should I approach them? VC WANNABE

DEAR WANNABE: "Everybody wants to be a venture capitalist," says Larry Buchsbaum, a senior manager in PricewaterhouseCooper's global venture capital practice. (For everything you could possibly want to know about the venture capital trade, see Pricewaterhouse's Website at www.pwcmoneytree.com.) "I'd like to be one myself." And why not? In the first half of this year, VCs shoveled nearly $12 billion into fledgling businesses. That's more than they invested in all of last year, and the trend shows no sign of slowing. The good news, from your point of view, is that venture capital firms are desperately short-handed and in need of fresh talent, giving rise to a whole new mini-industry of executive recruiters who do nothing but seek out VC wannabes.

The bad news, I'm sorry to say, is that you haven't got the kind of background most VC firms want right now. "Traditionally, you could get hired right out of B-school or from an analyst's position at an investment bank," explains Carol Dressler, head of Dressler Associates in Palo Alto, a top VC recruiting firm. "Now you really need hands-on operating experience, preferably in a small high-tech company. You've got to have deep technical knowledge, and you need to know firsthand what it takes to help a company grow." Marketing savvy helps too: "In the early stages, bringing a product to market and positioning it properly are essential." Mark Smith, a recruiter at Korn/Ferry International who finds people for venture capital firms centered around Route 128 outside of Boston, agrees: "It used to be much more transaction oriented. Now, though, VCs want technical knowledge. They figure they can teach you the transaction stuff"--or hire an investment bank to handle it.

These folks had me so discouraged on your behalf that I tracked down a real live venture capitalist (which isn't easy: they're always on airplanes). "We look for people who have technology in their gut, who can talk with engineers and programmers in their own language," says Tench Coxe, a partner in Palo Alto VC powerhouse Sutter Hill Ventures. "We also need people who can do corporate strategy. And people who are good at staying very, very calm when things go wrong." Oh.

However, do not give up just yet. Mark Smith at Korn/Ferry did mention that on Wall Street now, the closest thing to what venture capitalists do is the leveraged-buyout business. Says he: "LBO people often have the same skills and develop the same kinds of experience that you find among VCs. So we see a few of them crossing over into venture capital firms." Can you get out of mergers and acquisitions and maneuver your way into the LBO department? If so, you may be able to cross over in a few years. It's worth a try.

DEAR ANNIE: I'm 17 years old, but I hope you will answer me anyway. I'm heading to college in January and I want to study business management, but my father wants me to learn civil engineering. He says business management is not a real career. What is civil engineering, anyway? He won't even explain it to me. What should I do? CAROLYN

DEAR CAROLYN: Business management is not a real career? Gosh. That will come as a surprise to many readers of this magazine (although by no means all, but that's another story). Civil engineers design roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and suchlike, so obviously this is very useful work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are about 200,000 civil engineers working in the U.S. right now, about half of them private consultants and another 39% employed by federal, state, and local governments.

Far be it from me to meddle in a family argument, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that there doesn't have to be one--at least not yet. You don't have to choose a major until your junior year. So why not take courses in both business and engineering, and see which you like better? By the way, how good are you at math? In civil engineering, it really, really matters.