IT Employment

What immediately comes to mind is the old saying "Jack of all trades, expert of none."

Unfortunately, what many employers want is "jack of all trades, expert of all as well".

I think what most employers really mean when they add "(name a skill) desired" to a job ad is that they either presently have in place are are anticipating adding a business process that makes use of those skills, but the process isn't a critical one (otherwise it would be an up-front requirement). It can and will be used as a discriminator between two potential employees that otherwise have similar experience/skill sets.

Going back to the "jack of all trades, expert of none", this comes about when one concetrates solely on acquiring a large variety of skills in different areas, but spends no time perfecting any of them. The obvious advantage to acquiring additional skill sets is that it increases your "saleability" and thus your options when job hunting. However, listing the skills without showing any experience in those areas will do you absolutely no good.

If you have already started acquirings skills in a specific area (i.e. Windows), I would contcentrate on first building on those skills and gaining experience before jumping to other areas.

You also need to determine which skills are in the greatest demand. If the majority of job offerings list MS skills as being required, but Unix/Linux skills as "nice to have", I would concentrate on the MS skills first.

Also realize that having a skill set, and having experience actually putting that skill set to ractical use, are two different thing. Employers want experience.