Which is an excellent additional point. Start trying to help open source projects. There’s a huge ecosystem of projects needing all kinds of help at every level of technical and programming experience from just above none to mythical 10x gurus.

By pitching in with an existing project you can legitimately help them and simultaneously be much more employable since it shows you can work in a team and work on that kind of software, the extra bonus is that by helping a larger project prospective employers are more likely to have heard of the project your contributing to.

Edit: This is more of a general advice to novices take. Since you’re clearly already doing this sort of reputation building work.