[rewma]

> The result? No response. No company cared what skills I have gained during my studies. They see courses like hardware security as non-practical and a course on multithreading as mostly theoretical.

I wouldn't take that personally, or even as a strong indication of a problem with your hard skills.

Sometimes recruiters mainly look for real-world experience because that makes a hiring a candidate easier to justify. People without work experience or a portfolio are a crapshoot. Also, resume embellishment is indeed a common problem, thus great but unverifiable CVs might raise a red flag. Furthermore, if a company is looking for someone to tighten nuts but they get a CV from a highly trained engineer, they might prefer to pass on him. After all, if he's being underemployed then he might not be planning on sticking around for long.

And finally, but not less importantly, soft skills matter. Sometimes they matter far more than hard skills. A recruiter can tolerate a competent candidate that is eager to learn, but they will be less inclined to tolerate an outstanding developer who is unbearable, insufferable, or unwilling to learn from (and work with) team members.

In the end it's all a crapshoot anyway. There is a lot of confirmation bias, and a lot of lottery winners offering advise on how to win lotteries, but we would do well to acknowledge that the stars need to be aligned for good things to happen, and often they aren't.