[memorydial]

Focus on building real projects, contributing to open source, and gaining practical experience. Strong problem-solving skills, knowing system design basics, and some cloud familiarity (AWS/Azure/GCP) help. Networking and referrals matter a lot—try to connect with industry folks on LinkedIn or attend meetups. Most importantly, don’t just grind LeetCode—show you can build and ship things.

[freedomben]

Very much agree with this. When I am looking at recently graduated candidates, I look for things they have actually built. When they have Open source projects on GitHub, that is incredible. Just throwing any crap up. There isn't sufficient though. Just throwing your school assignments up. There doesn't count either.

My best advice is start writing code to solve problems in your own life. Basically write apps to solve your own problem. A great example currently on hn is an expense tracker. That sort of stuff is great because you can showcase your front end and back-end skills, along with design and refinement. Then maintain that project for a while to show a history, which demonstrates your skill of maintenance. That sort of thing Will get you hired by me as a junior in a heartbeat.