I can think of 2 companies in the LA area that have gone from looking for a senior person to someone with a year of Perl or so. (The ad says a year, the reality...)

I think that they'd accept as experience doing a lot of little tasks in Perl while your official job said something else. Given how many people use Perl in that way, I don't see why anyone would want to hire someone intending to teach them Perl from scratch.

Also I wouldn't expect to find opportunities like this outside of a small number of markets. The market in LA being particularly good - that's why I chose to move here last year.

Cheers,
Ben