While I am a big advocate of self-guided learning, the best self-learners tend to be the people who have already gone through a guided curriculum at a post-secondary (i.e., university) level. What is your education background?

Being a "beginner" at something is great: the world is wide open to you. But it can also be somewhat daunting; tough to find your footing when there are so many parts of the path in darkness. Perhaps I'm waxing eloquent a bit much, here, but my point is, asking for books to read, modules on CPAN, and tutorials, is likely to add to the "daunting" aspect without really narrowing down your options to dig in and start learning.

Find something that interests you--a small project you would like to complete (and one that you will complete well). Something you will be motivated to take from start to finish, regardless of how many obstacles you need to overcome along the way.

Then, treat it like any other development project: start with a solid plan. If you don't have the skills to plan an entire project, you will never graduate to "professional" level. Programming language is irrelevant if you don't have the core software development skills to back it up.

Finally, follow your plan, and make a well-developed piece of software. (Again, core skill, here: you need the ability to honestly assess whether you have actually hit that mark.) It's one thing to Google enough examples and tutorials and references to hack up a 200-line script to balance your bank account, but it's quite another to have that same piece of code be a polished, publishable work that would stand up to review by other professionals. Yes, at this stage, you won't know enough Perl to code at that level, but if you want to get there, you must learn to judge yourself by the standard you ultimately wish to meet, or you will forever churn out mediocre code.

In other words, you're not going to learn the skills to paint the Sistine Chapel by being content doodling stick figures, even if they "get the job done"!

I've interviewed "senior Perl developers" with "15+ years of experience" who couldn't do a basic map transformation. On looking at their hideously bloated and barely-maintainable code, it was clear they'd just never had the courage to look at their code and ask, "how could I have done this better?

Don't rush through things. You're learning, so you especially now want to take the time to do things right; to the highest standard you can. Then do it again. Better. Bring 25-50 line (runnable) examples to Perlmonks once in a while for review to have the bar raised on those standards when you're ready.

Pick some programming project slightly out of your comfort zone.

Solve it.

Repeat.

You should also read the free book Modern Perl , as it will quickly bring you up to speed on the latest ways of doing things.

Furthermore, when you do reach the point where you could maybe call yourself “senior,” Perl will be only one of a great many programming-languages that you will have learned how to use over the course of a career that consisted of finding out what businesses need to do with their computers and then finding the appropriate way to do it.   The fact of the matter is that any and every programming language is a tool by which to do a job.   “Seniority” represents your experience level in solving that job in many different and more-complex situations, no matter what tool(s) you used to do a particular one.

My advice is that you should, as soon as possible, get a job in the business and do the best job that you can, whether that job seems large or small.   Pay very close attention to the people around you.   Do not be afraid to ask for help – in fact, very much the opposite.   Likewise, do not inflate your own abilities:   if such is to be done, let your peers do it for you.   My first job in computers consisted of tearing pages off a line printer and shoving them through the proper slot.   And that was more than thirty years ago.

You can't seriously believe this. You don't do any of these things. You don't pay close attention to anyone, or what they say, or their proof that your advice is nonsense. You on the other hand never prove anything you say. You constantly inflate your own abilities. Anyone looking at your post history will quickly find out you are a fraud. Stop posting such crap.