The alternative solution is to not pigeonhole yourself as a Perl programmer. I have tried throughout my career to sell myself as a programmer, without a specific language. So far it has worked well. I've gotten jobs because I know Perl, tcl, SQL tuning and optimization, and COBOL. In all of these cases, these were not the top line requirements for the job (usually C/Java/Oracle/UNIX-type jobs). You may be suprised how far Perl will take you in the actual interview even though it is not an actual requirement for the job.