I need your advice. Some background: I am a 35 year old career changer. To date I have a BS in applied ecology, worked in my own small business for many years, and spent the last 2 years as a day trader. While a day trader, I also did PHP/MySQL web develoment here and there, amassing the equivalent of a total of 6 months experience in it.

My day trading techniques no longer work because of decimalization. I want to get an IT job. I passed the DBO test but it seems pretty much useless for getting a job. I have passed 4 of 5 8i DBA track tests, but am wondering if getting my OCP is even going to help me -- given not only do I have no Oracle experience, but not much general IT experience, and my degree is in a science discipline, not IT.

So any suggestions? I can't do a very long unpaid internship, as I need to support myself, unless the internship allowed me to work in the evenings and on weekends. I could volunteer on the weekends? but does anyone have work on the weekends? It seems like that approach will take forever to gain much experience. And in the mean time I still need a job. I have been watching many internet job boards and company website job listings. While there are huge numbers of Oracle listings seeking people with experience, I have yet to see a single help wanted for an entry level Oracle position, so it seems such jobs are not advertised. Certainly they must exist though?

Perhaps with enough networking and a lot of luck I could land some entry level Oracle job. But it seems unlikely. So I am wondering what other, lower level job should I pursue to position myself to hopefully eventually move into an Oracle entry level job? Is there any certification I can go get where I will have a higher chance of getting a job with no experience, just certification? And then hopefully get such a job where they have an Oracle shop so that I can volunteer with them on the side and position myself to move into any entry level opening? Thus meaning I'd want to find a company that had a large Oracle shop so that there would a higher probability of an entry level opportunity surfacing?

Any advice you can provide would be deeply appreciated....