Assuming that you're coming in without experience, pedigree, or favoritism, the only things left are portfolio, coding tests, and interview questions. You're p

Assuming that you're coming in without experience, pedigree, or favoritism, the only things left are portfolio, coding tests, and interview questions. You're probably getting interview questions either way, so the things you can control are studying for coding tests (which is a terrible thing according to some here) or building a portfolio. My rules for a portfolio project: 1. Solve a problem which can be explained in 15 seconds or so. For example, "This does 3d rotations" 2. Be difficult enough that the person you're talking to wouldn't be able to figure out all the tricks within a minute of thinking about it. In the above example, this means that while the interviewer may think "implement a bunch of math", they don't know that math and know you must have gone off and put some time in to accomplish it. 3. Be complete - for a programmer that means it runs, takes input, and provides output. In the above example, this means you have a function which takes a current orientation and rotates it. Probably also a main to that actually runs to demo this. Bonus points for something which solves a developer's problem, even if it's not formalized to the point where it would be worth sharing. If it solves your problem, that's respectable already. A current example of this that I've wanted to write (or perhaps it exists already and I don't know about it), would be a logging system separate from the system logger, which will intentionally trip up some git hooks so that it can't be checked in. Maybe a script to purge those log lines and the package that includes it prior to check-ins.