I went from being a call center employee to a software engineering job within a month. I couldn't believe how simple it was. I will tell you the main tricks so you don't have waste time figuring out and researching it. I am going to talk specifically about finding jobs in software or tech/product companies in general. If you are not looking for one you can skip it, P.S I don't have a degree in computer science, I learned it on my own online, so anyone can too. However, most of the advice is going to be relevant to you(except for the software part).

Software writing is about solving a business problem, either by growing the revenue or reducing the cost. The main technique here is to understand the business problem(this is the key) and how software can solve it.

In order to write a software that's good you have to understand the business/domain first; what it does, who are the customers and what problem they are trying to solve, and what are the challenges in solving those problems. Once you are able to answer those questions you then approach the solution, you will be able to convince most business owners. The key here is to stand out and show the world why you are the right person for it.

As a fresher, most of your focus is on understanding the language(software language) and gathering skills. This is important and I completely agree with this but most kids are also focussed on this and for the person hiring, it's hard to filter out who is really good. Start building projects as a hobby for fun which solves some problems with you and your friend. Share the project on Github and ask your friends to review and contribute to it. Building real projects which can be used by a group of people will help you understand the intricacies of your skill and help you find gaps and improve on them. Once you do this for 2-3 projects you develop confidence and sharpen your craft to figure out things and make it work end to end.

Writing is super important. Whatever projects you are building, write blogs about it in a way that anyone can understand it easily. Define the problem statement well enough, explain why this is a problem that needs to be solved. Tell the people(group) facing this problem and how you are solving it and how many people have benefitted from it, either by making it easy for them or by saving time or saving money or by helping them make money. Doing this helps you in understanding it better and also shows the clarity of thought to approach any kind of business problem in general.

Writing will help you build an audience and you can share these writings with companies where wish to apply or companies who wants to know more about you. Write one post every week about the problem you have already solved, or something you are curious about or something you wish to solve. Writing forces you think clearly and also helps people reading understand more about you as a person and interests.

Make a list of companies you wish to work with. Check their website, employees, founders, blogs, GitHub, Twitter, basically follow them everywhere and observe for 2 - 3 weeks. Try to make notes of what they are talking about and what they are trying to selling and understanding the intent in terms of business, customers, and talent. Making notes will help you find patterns and using those patterns to work on your skills and improve them. This exercise will make you better prepared for these companies as you already have some understanding of what they do and how they work. It will show that you have done the homework and your attitude that you are sincere and willing to put in the effort to make things work for you.

In the extremely over-crowded world, the key is to stand out in the crowd. All these efforts will make you confident and better than most junks out there. It's harder for companies to filter candidates who are really good and bad because everyone writes the same skills on the CV. Doing things that few are doing will improve the odds of success drastically. Be authentic, if you don't know something say the truth. Fakeness doesn't stand long, make notes of things who aren't good at and work on it based on the feedback. Don't be desperate rather help companies understand why you are the person to do it and do it well enough. Give them the confidence that they are looking for in a prospective employee.

That's it, you have learned 80% of the rules of getting ahead of average crowds looking for a job. If you follow this, you will not need any reference or network to get into a job or internship. The objective is to create enough social proof that you are much better than the average through your work, writing, authenticity, and social media(LinkedIn & Twitter in this case) presence. The best time to start doing this is when you are in college and the second-best time is now.