I don't want to lie to get a job. And companies do verify. Maybe not small startups, but everyone else does. And those small startups will start verifying when they grow.
Still in India. The layoffs and the recent batch of fresh graduates have really made it impossible to get a job as companies can basically take their pick. Immediate joiners, low salary expectations, work experience from FAANG like companies. And then there's the great vanishing of VC money as interest rates have been raised sharply
In addition to the many suggestions offered above, you could also try your hand creating a portfolio by contributing to open source projects.
If you don’t know where to start, you could start by reviewing COSS (commercial open source software) projects that need help from contributors in exchange for payment (aka bounties) on Algora [1].
Issues typically have a dollar amount attached to them and the dollar amount is often a proxy of how much effort it would take you to complete it.
So, a $20 issue could probably take you a few mins to complete, while a $200 ticket could probably take you a few hours to a few days, if you are not familiar with the codebase/stack.
Note that competition is fierce for the “easy” tasks on Algora and many Algora regulars will open a PR (pull request) within minutes of a bounty being available publicly.