Advice needed in what is the next step for a developer

Ladies gents and fellow Java Developers. Advice needed.
Most java positions now ask for experience in developing financial software, at least 70 to almost 80% of all jobs vacancies I receive in a given morning.
My question for you, if I did a basic course in finance, covering fixed investments, futures, foreign Exchange and Securities. Would those of you who are in a position to recruit; would you look at my CV, or would you insist that I need the hands on experience.
As I may be unemployed for a while I want to put that time to good use. And with the feedback I have received it looks as if you now need outside skills to complement your IT skills rather than just adding to your IT skills. I may be wrong that is just the opinion I have formed.
Although I am UK based, I think any advice for USA based developers would be the same for the UK market.
Cheers For any help or advice given.
Tony

Finance
Defense/Security related include your own clearance
BioInformatics (probably include Medicine)
Applied Math and Sciences
...
...
Used to include very hot (now very cold) telecom

Broaden your knowledge base w/ inter-discipline fields is always a good idea. I'm learning applied math by myself now.
Good luck!
[ July 19, 2002: Message edited by: Roseanne Zhang ]

Very few people on this list have done much hiring. I would also recommend calling up or emailing HR managers directly, especially of companies you might be interested in. You might impress them with your motivation and that could give you an in, later on.
--Mark

Cheers for the replies, I have just sent away for details on courses, a 5 day Fixed Income course costs 2K sterling. Will have to think about that.
Phoning HR is a good idea, at least that way I can cut out the spotty oik factor (IT Rec Agencies).
Cheers Tony

Tony,
If you are going to be unemployed for a while, then you might want try doing some work on an open source project with www.apache.org. Your resume will than state that you spent your time developing code for Tomcat, Axis, Ant, Xerces, Xalan, or some other interesting Apache project. Otherwise, your resume could develop a large gap. Furthermore, a company that is developing a new product using any of the above might be very happy to hire a programmer with intimate knowledge of the technology.
If you are interested, then just go to the page for any of the Apache projects and take a look at the "Get Involved" page. For example, if you are interested in web services, then you might want to contribute to The Axis Project which is basically Apache's new implementation of SOAP. To get started, you first subscribe to the mailing lists for developers and users. The mail traffic is very high, so you might want to subscribe using a new email account on yahoo or wherever. To modify the Axis code, you just install the CVS source code control system on your machine and download it. You will need to install Apache Ant to build it. To get an idea of what code needs work, just ask on the developer mailing list.
The same is true for any of the Apache projects.

Thank you Dan, that is a very good idea. I will register today.
Cheers Tony

Hi Tony,
You may want to try and find out how much knowledge is expected of you. For example, the IT department of an investment bank may want you to be familiar with the concepts of their industry, but not necessarily an expert. Changse are reading a few intro-level books would tell you enough to get up to speed. A company developing products or services to sell to investment banks may want really deep knowledge and practical experience if they are expecting your industry insights to help them create the 'right' product or service. Even attending a class may not help you in that case.