I wouldn’t bother with the Fiverr thing but interesting personal projects and FOSS contributions are both good. Sizeable FOSS projects mean you’re working with other people which brings both benefits and challenges, and more closely resembles the “job” world. You could also look for actual paying work (not gig work like Fiverr, that is crap) if you have the time for it (summer job might be possible). Look at the monthly “Who is hiring” thread (first weekday of each month) on news.ycombinator.com, look on craigslist, etc.

Getting involved in FOSS is pretty simple. Find a project with a list of open tasks or an issue tracker, find something that interests you, say you are interested in working on that task, and start contributing patches. Usually if the project is not a high-visibility one with a lot of contributors already, it will welcome any help it can get. Lots of such projects have Freenode IRC channels where you can chat with the other devs in real time. I’m less comfortable with the ones that use Discord, but that’s just me.

If your school has Hackathons, try to do those, ideally with friends. The atmosphere is honestly a bit horrible in my opinion and you may get instant imposter syndrome, but it gives you a project to talk about.

In addition to what everyone else has said: internships.

You’ll understand a bit more about how to play the corporate tech game, and there’s an absolute fuckload of stuff that school just straight up does not touch on. Also, it’s a great way to start off your network. Also also, since “entry level” jobs commonly have “required” experience, you can say that you’ve got a year or two experience with a straight face (and not be bullshitting about it, because you do at that point).

You could also go to the physics or biology wings to see if you can help them with simulations.

As someone who has hired lots of CS students, the successful ones tend to:

-Have a public GIT repo where they have all of their personal and class projects publicly available. You put this on your resume and potential employers can browse at leisure.

-Have done a student group like robotics or satellite club.

-Have interned somewhere with a name. Doesn’t matter what the job is, just get that name on your resume. Sadly, what you know and can do is less important than where you interned and overworked or unmotivated hiring managers really need bullet points that they can grab on to and then move on.

I’d go for open source projects. They usually have bigger code bases and good practices, that they enforce on their contributors with code reviews and such.

It’s a good way to get feedback on your code, something miss out on personal projects and get much less of in university and corporate projects.

#1 will be your best bet because the motivation comes free with something you’re more passionate or engaged with such as a personal project. And, on the mirror side of that, reproduce existing programs/applets in a language of your choice. For example, an HTTP client or xxd.

Make things!

Whether you’re working on FOSS project or your own personal projects, building cool and diverse stuff that you’re passionate about is the best way to get experience quick.

Regarding your personal project, starting over is usually not a bad idea. Especially if your own skills have grown a bunch since starting. Make sure you keep old versions around for reference!

I’ve personally never gotten much out of freelancing or coding challenges. I think it depends on if you see CS more as a career or more as a passion (both of those are perfectly legitimate). I should also mention, a lot of professionals don’t do any programming outside of work. You don’t need to dedicate time outside of work to be good at this job.

The most important thing is to have fun and not to burn yourself out. Take care of your body and mind!

If you have a particular job focus for after you’ve graduated with your CS degree, would an internship with a related company be an option? Experience with web will be of limited use for an embedded job, and embedded experience is of limited use at a quantitative analysis company.

That’s not to say the experience is entirely pointless, since many skills across the various disciplines of CS are transferable.

Getting a job is a multi stage battle. Options 1, 2, and 3.5 won’t get you past the first stage, the inept HR screener. Doesn’t matter if it’s an entry level job, your resume looks worse to them than anyone with any professional experience. Option 3 kinda works for it, but even better would be an internship or two. That looks like real experience to the HR monkeys. Once you slay them, now you’re to the manager resume screen. This is where options 1 and 2, and maybe 3.5 can help. Score an interview with them, then it’s up to your shining personality to get you the rest of the way.

Every job in the industry has hundreds of applicants these days. It’s no longer enough that your resume meets the requirements, it’s got to actually compete. Since most jobs allow remote these days, it’s got to compete on a national or even international scale. Apply to on-site or hybrid roles to limit the market of competition. Make sure your resume screams that you’re better than the rest.

Good luck!

this was true 20 years ago so your mileage is absolutely going to vary today; but it worked for me:

• if you haven’t graduated: intern
• if you have graduated: contract