Sad but true, too many people seem to get through coasting and never working on their craft. What really gets me is the lack of passion for it, I got into programming for the love of coding, money is a happy side effect. Too many I have seen don't seem to care, or are too lazy to improve.
Subscribe to: Punetech.com, pluggd.in, hackerstreet.in and look for jobs on http://sutrajobs.com and http://www.venturewoods.org/index.php/venturejobs/
This guy has given an excellent post on contributing to open source: http://shal.in/post/285909694/why-you-should-contribute-to-o...
P.S. Avoid being the 'polite Indian' described by jgrahamc by asking ppl to do ur work ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1886310 )
P.P.S: if you wish to get recruited for Infy, Cogni, Wipro you've come to the wrong forum
2. Read http://java.sun.com/docs/books/effective/
3. Recite one of the lessons you learned from #2 and impress the interviewer so that you can land that first job.
4. Become a decent programmer (this step is optional but recommended for long-term security)