As a student studying CS, what is the best way to get your feet in the job market?

What are you specialising in?

While in school? Probably being an intern. Graduating? Applying for jobs that would keep your interest..

Learn JavaScript :)

LinkedIn and GitHub, I'd say. Besides the most obvious stuff like motivation, social skills etc.

LinkedIn. If you're in college go for an apprenticeship because many offer degree schemes the company pay for themselves. As the government (uk) are pushing for
a growth in apprenticeships. If you're at Uni ensure you push for and land a good placement year as you'll more than likely be kept on afterwards

Internship. Even an unpaid one in a good place is better than just taking more classes in the summer.

Internship, GitHub stuff even if it's simple (make it look complex), play around with code:

Put together a killer resume and matching LinkedIn profile. Personal websites are good too. Talk to your college's career office-- they can put you in touch with good opportunities (many students forget this!).

Internships are key. Often, places that hire new grads won't consider a resume without an internship. If you don't have that, you can include school projects and side projects in your "relevant experience" section. Just make it clear which projects are part of your coursework.

Portfolio, anything is better than nothing.

@BellAppLab C++ Backend Dev

What the others said about LinkedIn and GitHub. But my two pennies would be to go to hackathons and meet ups. 1. They're awesome. 2. Free pizza and beer. 3. Why're you still reading...go to one! :p

@Tim2728 wow, that's some clever sh-- stuff you got going. In that case, I second @orion-ix 's comment.

The cool thing about hackathons is that they care less about code accuracy (meaning production ready code) and more about the idea. So if you can come up with some clever stuff quickly, you're in for a treat.

@BellAppLab yeah and the bonus is hackathons are sponsored by big companies a lot of the time. And their engineers come down as well so you can pick up live coding tips from pros. I've met peeps from Intel, Microsoft, Bloomberg, etc

@orion-ix Indeed! Two friends of mine got internships this way.

Internship -- assuming you are learning actual skills and not playing in excel all day.

go for projects that you really love if you don't want to end burned up as a consultant in some shitty company

@BellAppLab yeah it's a great way! And @op I managed to secure an internship in Airbus Space for next year and experience from these hackathons went a long way in the interview. I'm doing my 2nd year final rn and I'm an undergrad CS student :)

apply for a desired placements/internships in 3rd year. That will secure 70% of your job qualifications after graduation.
That's how it works in the UK.

graduate job without prior experience is simply not easy