If someone who actually has the authority to hire you asks, “do you have X-years experience in blah?” look him or her straight in the eye and say, “no, but if you hire me, I'll be an expert by my first day on the job.” (And if you're good, it won't be a lie: you will be.)

"Blah" in this context must be a member of the set of programming languages that doesn't include Haskell, OCaml, Erlang, Prolog, Forth, or Self -- languages that are very different from Java or C++. Fortunately, most programming jobs use languages that resemble Java with the serial numbers filed off.

Update: Rephrased.