Having a package or two on Hackage (or even better, in the Haskell Platform) will demonstrate effort and aptitude at learning, and give the opportunity to revie

Having a package or two on Hackage (or even better, in the Haskell Platform) will demonstrate effort and aptitude at learning, and give the opportunity to review your work. If you want to become strong enough to leverage yourself into a Haskell job, stop writing in anything but Haskell for non-production-work tasks. All your shell scripts--Haskell. All your recreational coding--Haskell. Picture yourself in a Shao Lin temple of Haskell. Also, think about the flip side of your question. Haskell is a pain in the ass for the first few months. If you haven't climbed a substantial part of the learning curve by the time you interview, you might discover that you hate it[1]. Part of the interview process is not just seeing if you can do the job, but that you'll stick around for at least a year and not quit because you don't like the environment. I normally wouldn't worry about someone trying to make a transition from Java to C#, but I would worry about someone trying Java -> Haskell without having broken through the "difficult" parts. [1] There's a lot to hate. Imagine, on the flip side, if you had to program in RPG II. You'd want out as soon as you realized you made a mistake. Admittedly, RPG of any flavor doesn't sound sexy, but you get the idea.