The P4 Plugin is not able to sync symlink files from Perforce. It produces the following error message in the job console:
P4JAVA: symlink file /var/jenkins/workspace/test_build_1/qa/symlinksynctest/myfilesymlink can't be sync'd or created with this client program.
ERROR: Unable to update workspace: hudson.AbortException: P4JAVA: symlink file /var/jenkins/workspace/test_build_1/qa/symlinksynctest/myfilesymlink can't be sync'd or created with this client program.
I've confirmed that the same behavior happens whether the symlink is to a file or to a directory.