Find a project. It doesn’t have to be something meaningful or important, just do it! Write a scraper to find the nearest Starbucks to you. Make a group manag

Find a project. It doesn’t have to be something meaningful or important, just do it! Write a scraper to find the nearest Starbucks to you. Make a group management website for your study groups. Write software to control a LEGO mindstorm robot. Just do something, post projects online, put code up on GitHub, and write something about what you did, and put it on a blog. This gives you a public record of interest in programming outside of work, which is very, very appealing to employers and probably the number one thing in getting to an interview. It will also give you practice writing and show you how you improve over time. In my experience, I don't think a single person who has interviewed me has gone to the trouble of sifting through my commit histories and reviewed any of my code. When I mention the open source projects I commit to, they usually just nod and say, "that's cool." I don't think that it really helps all that much tbh. Unless you wrote a major project that many businesses rely on, don't hedge your bets on your bug fixes and feature enhancements turning any heads.