I just graduated with a BS in CS & MATH at a state university with pretty good CS reputation, and still don't have a job. I have had 3 interviews by now, 2 of which I made it to last round but didn't get the job. Besides the lack of effort on my part (didn't apply as much as I should have), the lack of a good internship experience (had a 2-month internship at a friend's incubator startup, some TA and assistantship experience), and the lack of interview skills, my ability in actual development is probably to blame.
I know this is the case for a lot of CS undergrads just coming out of college, but my education path has been particularly math heavy. I've mostly opted for classes that count as both math and CS courses to kill two birds with one stone (e.g. graph theory, cryptology, ...), and these courses lack hands-on programming.
In addition, I am only now just starting to get into web dev (6-month ago, I didn’t even know what MongoDB was, or how to request a POST method), so a lot of the companies out there hiring for full time positions are going to raise their eye brows at me. I’ve had an interview where the interviewer partially realized this, and changed directions for me to ask more “fundamental” CS questions like “how does a DNS resolve URLs?” And I felt so embarrassed because I really didn’t know at the time.
Everyone tells me how desirable my degree is, but in my experience, more traditional companies hiring for full time SWE positions want mostly professionals with great development knowledge. Or, in the cases of larger companies like Google or Facebook, are willing to hire “smart” people and train them. This occurs mostly for internships or people with very impressive theoretical backgrounds. I can’t really apply for internships anymore since I graduated, and my background is just average. Besides, the prime time for hiring from these big companies are mostly in the Fall.
So I’m wondering what SoF would recommend or advise me to do? How can someone in my situation market themselves? Or what could someone like me do to get a good job fast?