The catch-22 for getting any first job is to invest time into that which appeals to the desires of the hiring personnel. That said they still have to choose to invest that time into either skills advancement or trendiness.
What they can do is reach out to hiring managers at various employers to get a feel for what job providers actually want. The challenge there is finding people and asking the correct questions. It’s the same challenge most hiring managers have, so once they solve it from their perspective they will be uniquely advantaged.
Short version: If I couldn’t get any responses from random companies looking for “enterprise developer with AWS experience” because every open req gets hundreds of applications and I had at the time a decade of experience (on my resume I actually had more) including leading AWS architecture at two companies and working at AWS, how is a junior developer going to stand out?
Of course submitting my resume to random ATS’s was an experiment. I had multiple offers via my network including a Director of an F500 company. But I was 49 at the time
I don’t think you realize how much of a shit show it is our there now for any developer especially junior developers
What they can do is reach out to hiring managers at various employers to get a feel for what job providers actually want. The challenge there is finding people and asking the correct questions. It’s the same challenge most hiring managers have, so once they solve it from their perspective they will be uniquely advantaged.