Well job wise, most places won't take you without experience. I would say you should just start working on open source projects trying to increase your C and Java skills. Look around there are projects everywhere looking for people that know C or Java.

(To damn bad, I can't find any for perl.)

Most open Source projects have so many people that are really good at the langauge they have will have no problem helping you increase your skill in the langauge and coding.

If you get good enough, or even know you can just try to find a kernel project to work on, there are plenty out there.

**** download a distro, and just work on adding stuff.