I don't agree with the concept of mentoring. You can read my thoughts on mentoring here . In addition to that, the concept of me mentoring people doesn't scale. I am one person and there are lots of people that read this site. It's not practical for me to mentor everyone that asked.

The most important thing is you learn to learn for yourself! I mention this is several posts linked from the post here . In addition, I've written the following articles on specific questions. - Learning to be an Oracle Database Administrator (DBA) - How To Learn Real Application Clusters (RAC) Administration

I rarely read technical books anymore. I prefer to read the Oracle manuals and practice things for real. If you want to read books other than the manuals, I suggest you search on Amazon for books on the subject in question and read the reviews. Pick something that looks suitable.

I'm not a recruitment consultant, so I can't really tell you the best route to getting a job. I suggest you contact some recruitment consultancies in the location you want to work and ask them what they are looking for and how to apply for jobs through them. If you are new to the job market, you might not really know what part of IT you want to work in. If you've never been a DBA, how can you know you will enjoy being a DBA? If you've never been a developer, how can you know you will enjoy being a developer? What you experience in a course, or playing with the technology at home, has very little in common with doing the day to day job. If I were to give you advice, I would say accept the first job you are offered and learn as much as you can from it. As soon as you start to feel there is nothing more to learn, look for the next job. It is far easier to get a new job if you are already working! Note. This is a website I do for fun in my spare time. It's not a business and I don't hire people, so I'm not going to give you a job.

You can read my thoughts on certification here . -