Look at job boards like Dice.com and Yahoo! HotJobs for clues. What information technology positions do most employers advertise for within, say, a 50-mile radius of your zip code or wherever you intend to look for a job?

In my case, for example, I started taking ASP.NET, VB.NET and C# classes because there are more job openings for those technical skills. Off the top of my head, I can recall other skills that are in demand within a 30-miles radius of my zip code are in SAP, Oracle, Java/J2EE, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP), Javascript, HTML, CSS.

As for certifications -- based on posts in LinkedIn.com, it would appear that HR staff and hiring managers value experience over certifications. Many actually have a poor opinion of vendor-specific certifications. They were particularly down on a certain vendor based in Redmond, WA because you could "crash-course" your way to earning a certificate. However, they do still give merit to some certifications, specifically those which are so difficult to obtain because they demand a demonstrated level of proficiency. Examples they cited are CCIE, CCNE, CISSP and CISA. Now remember, these are not my personal opinions. These are the opinions of hiring staff and managers who posted in LinkedIn.com.