[hatsubai]

I have a degree in IT. My first job was through a personal connection after literally over 100 resumes I sent out (I had a huge spreadsheet of job positions and offers. Offers was almost always "REJECTED"). It was a bit different for me in that I didn't want to work in my home state anymore, and I was actively turning down any local positions. Regardless, I could only get about 2 to 3 companies to even interview a new graduate with nothing to really show on my resume. It probably doesn't really help with your situation, and it might not be what you were hoping to hear, but it's how I landed my very first dev job. Without my connection and someone vouching for me, I'm not sure what would have happened...

That out of the way, don't give up. There are lots of positions out there, and many people are hiring. Keep on trying and don't give up. Careerbuilder and other websites can help a good bit in terms of getting your name out there. Recruiters on there and other resume places have helped me find other jobs, and I am currently at a solid company with good pay. Passion helps a ton, I've found. Find something to be passionate about, both in the tech field and outside the tech field.

But just to touch one more thing - the concepts you are struggling with take practice. I had to teach myself most CS concepts, and a lot of it involved going to MIT's site or going to Harvard's site and grinding them out. I spent many many hours on YouTube and elsewhere just trying to understand the concepts and, most importantly, writing software utilizing these concepts. I still regularly quiz myself once a month on some random interview question, such as how to write a DFS or BFS from scratch, how to reverse a binary tree, or how to implement something like Dijkstra's from scratch without looking anything up. If I find myself needing to look stuff up, I make a mental note on the concept(s) I'm rusty on and do a few more exercises pertaining to the concept. If I find the stuff easy, I make sure not to review it for quite awhile (utilizing Anki is a great way to do this, by the way).