Most of experienced ranchers will advice you to learn Hibernate,Spring,
Struts,JMS and web 2.0 technologies.
Maybe some of them tell you contribute on openSource projects which will take time.
I am sorta jobless my damn self.I have planned to diversify my skills and started learning c# and php because in my region
they are not playing with Java and asking for php,Vb.net ,C#.net and mysql.Some of them wants swing developer,
oracle dba administrator and J2me developer.The latter I don't know.I will go with the former.
I would advice you to jump in Information security field but it's very hard for the less experienced Java guys.
One has to start from scratch and it takes at least an year to be trained system admin and then more.
They say things will get worst before it gets better.
Currently I am doing 6000 Rs/month only job in core Java/sql and there is no learning opportunity there.
best regards,
omi