What the hell do I do with this information?

[Perry Winkle]

I really hate looking for a job.

Supposedly there is a shortage of IT workers, something like 40% of new IT jobs go unfilled each year?

I'm a competent programmer, but I may not know the language they want me to use. It's the programming skill, not a particular language skill-set, that they should hire for.

I have 5+ years of near full-time programming experience (between part-time work and a full-time CS course-load), but I'm seriously going to have to look at entry level jobs.

Since 95%+ of the code I've written is proprietary and I haven't done hobby coding in a long time (since before I started college), I don't really have a portfolio to speak of.

I hope this post is incoherent enough for you...