This may not be the right forum to put up a question like the one I'm about to ask. I am hoping that I would get very fruitful responses.

i) I have been learning UNIX for sometime now, but my question is realistically what do I need to be able to be able to apply for UNIX jobs.
What sort of tasks should I be able to learn in real depth?

ii) And, for someone starting what sort of company should I target for UNIX starter roles?

Thanks.

Ironically, I would go for a Windows job at a company I knew had UNIX/LINUX environments also - it might be difficult landing a decent UNIX role without any previous experience.

Preferably a small company where you can get your hands on everything, not a huge corporation where you'll only get your hands on very specific areas.

Go find a copy of Unix Hints & Hacks by Kirk Waingrow. Chapter 10 on, tells you everything you need to know about being a Unix Administrator and how to land a job. It goes into deep details on what you can expect from a career in Unix.

-akak

I agree with the comment about finding a position where you can do Unix plus other stuff. I started with a help desk position where I did Windows, Netware, OS/2, and Unix all. Since I liked Unix and knew it best of all the help desk guys I was able to work my way into a Unix admin position after a while.

Also, check out The Practice of System and Network Administration by Limoncelli and Hogan. It has tons of material about finding sysadmin jobs and beign successful once you have them.

I think it also helps if you do stuff on your own. Ie: run your own Unix server, build kernels, implement various services, and experiment with all aspects of administration. There are plenty of books out there to. An admin role is not a good starter role with no admin background. A first level help desk/support might be a good start.

take on any opportunity you can to do something with UNIX, even if it means working for free. This will pay off in the end.

Become self sufficient and learn shell scripting. Having the capability to write a script for anything proves very helpful as an admin.

here is another tip that will save you and your fellow co-workers much pain. Do it because you enjoy to do it; learn it, live it, breath it and you will be fine.

here are several commands I would become very familiar with. there are many more but this is a good start.

man
sed
awk
find
xargs
more
grep
less
tail
head
cat
cut
tar
sort
uniq
diff
cpio
crontab format
ssh/scp

I started long ago although had diplomas as programmer analyst for free (stage...) on mainframe then wanting to do some oracle finished by entering unix world... and got a job...

Your best bet now is not only unix knowledge but knowing what is your goal

Pure system? Then be sure to have some C language base ( and a little perl...) and master vi and all common system perf commands AND have a good idea of unix internals, be aware of java stuff and its impact on kernel params and performance/issues...
I have seen many companies trying to deal with web servers nad willing to find someone to tune and maintain the beasts...


Good luck

like the other posts... helpdesk is where it's at. I started at a software engineering company doing windows helpdesk 4 years ago. Our unix environment consists of linux(redhat/suse) solaris(6/7/8/9/10), tru64, hpux(11/11.11/11.23), irix, aix... and I ended up through trial and error, and showing motivation to take on about half of this environment(while still doing my helpdesk duties).