[jbigelow76]

.NET is very pragmatic as far as job opportunities go (I'll leave it for the zealots to dither about "startup" jobs vs "enterprise" jobs).

I'm hit up multiple times a week with emails or calls from recruiters wondering if I'm available or know anybody that is.

You may as well start off in MVC3, but the fundamentals between 2 and 3 are the same so learning using content targeted at 2 will carry over to 3.

As far as training, Pluralsight was mentioned in another comment below, it's an excellent resource and well worth the subscription fee for it's breadth of content. In addition tekpub.com offers training vids in MVC. Both Pluralsight and tekpub offer videos that go beyond .NET into things like javascript, jquery, Android dev, iOS, CSS etc...

[iapetos]

Thank for chiming in @jbigelow I am on Pluralsight and that is a great resource indeed. However, since I do not have any VB programming experience should I start learning VB first and then get into ASP.NET ?

[steverb]

No. Learn C#. There is much wider adoption of C#, and in the early days of .NET C# skills actually commanded a higher salary (it has the letter C, it must be good).

C# gets a lot more love from MS than VB does.