Did your teachers tell you that you've got calligraphic handwriting? Good, thumbs up from Softpedia, but that won't get you anywhere near the desk Apple has wiped the dust off for a Handwriting Recognition Engineer to sit at. What you need for this position with the Cupertino giant is a tad more complicated.

Yes, Apple is hiring a Handwriting Recognition Engineer for recognition technology that may even extend "beyond Mac OS X to other applications and the iPhone." Here's what the company's web site reveals:

"The Handwriting Recognition team is seeking an engineer who will be responsible for advancing Apple's handwriting recognition technology for Mac OS X. The ideal candidate will be an expert in the area of pattern recognition, with an excellent understanding of handwriting recognition issues. The person will also assume primary responsibility for maintaining and enhancing existing code and tools. The recognition technology you create may extend beyond Mac OS X to other applications and the iPhone."

Now, requirements say you need to be an expert in the area of pattern recognition, to have a strong design and analytical skills, to be a strong coder with experience in C or C++, to have the ability to work on several concurrent projects and to be able to track record of innovation and excellence on previous assignments.

Being well versed in the area of handwriting recognition should provide you with an advantage over other possible candidates for the job, as well as knowledge of and experience with hidden Markov model and neural net algorithms.

Proven track record of writing high-quality code in shipping products, experience in developing recognition solutions for non-Roman languages, experience with Unix and familiarity with Mac OS X, familiarity with language modeling and natural language processing, Knowledge of Cocoa and excellent communication skills also fall in the Additional Success Factors category of the job description.

If you're everything of the above and can also show Apple your PhD in Computer Science in the area of Pattern Recognition or AI, or BS with 5 years experience, the Cupertino folks would love to have you working for them.