It's who you know and sometimes also what you know. If you're a super-master 21 year old with a Masters in CS and triple-majored in physics, math and CS and fi

It's who you know and sometimes also what you know. If you're a super-master 21 year old with a Masters in CS and triple-majored in physics, math and CS and finished your undergrad degree at 17, then you are an exception and companies will want you because they know you are a rare gem. In the case of everyone else (wordpress/CMS people, basic app-builders, etc.) who you know matters too. There exists such a massive glut of incompetent PHP programmers hacking through WP and Joomla sites and they're getting along just fine. Knowing people really does help get you past the HR department, as you'll probably get a direct referral to the actual person who will hire you. You haven't mentioned what your skills are though. Are you a Ruby/Rails programmer? frontend/backend JS programmer? Java dev? Your actual coding language and location matter too.