[JustARandomGuy]

> If you understand that this is primarily an exercise in marketing and not tech, then you'll be on your way

A solid gold insight right there. I graduated into a bad economy as well (Millennial into the 08 recession) and what got me hired was not my honors GPA or dual major or any other academic achievement. I got hired because of my side project hosting a JSON API that offered some very simple data. I was able to talk about it during an interview and pretty much my passion for it got me hired.

Another alternative is to get into an open source project and offer to do some "developer evangelism" type work. Code up examples, documentation, write up blog posts - great way to get your name out there.

[toastercat]

I would like to point out that side projects and open source work is more useful as a new grad seeking employment than a junior.

In my experience (as a junior 8ish years ago), companies were not interested in my projects or open source work at all, even when it pertained to the same domain. I'd say if you want to work in open source to make yourself more hireable, to pick a high visibility project that companies may already know (like WordPress, Redis, React, etc.).