Doing a portfolio site can help. I would probably suggest spending your free/learning time doing something productive, make something you want to see... maybe

Doing a portfolio site can help. I would probably suggest spending your free/learning time doing something productive, make something you want to see... maybe create a hobby community site from scratch, with the source/ci-cd releases from github. This will demonstrate that you can understand backend, front end, database as well as ci/cd and version control systems. The fact that you operate a support community for a hobby (doesn't have to be technical) can be a bonus. That's just my though... you can probably target one of the free platforms out there, such as AWS or Google's free tier, use another tech that lends itself to a free tier such as Deno, cloudflare, etc. If you have some spend, then DigitalOcean, Linode or another VPS may be a decent option as well. In the end, make something that scratches an itch and demonstrates the skills you are likely to need. You will probably make mistakes, but getting something made accounts for a lot. I must admit, in my hobbiest activities lately, I have several projects in varying states of stalled out; Don't be like me. ;-) Mostly lack of motivation, partly analysis paralysis where I have too many things I want to explore. Favor making any decision and push forward. It's a good habit to get into, and I'm much better at it when someone else is paying me vs working on my own. Aside: (Admin/Mod) if someone could add the [AskHN] tag to the title...