I got my last two jobs this way minus the white paper. For the last one I learned Rails and made an app using the technologies listed in the job description, th

I got my last two jobs this way minus the white paper. For the last one I learned Rails and made an app using the technologies listed in the job description, threw it up on Github, spent a lot of time on the cover letter, and voila. They also asked me lots of computer science oriented questions in the interview, and for most of them I just said, straight up, "I don't have a formal CS education, so I don't know, but here's how I think that works." So many people try to stand out by doing some variation on the standard resume + cover letter routine, so it's relatively easy to stand out if you do literally anything else.