Joseph D. answered • 01/26/22
Senior SPA developer specializing in Angular
The best advice I can offer is to complete projects from Frontend Mentor (https://www.frontendmentor.io).
It offers real-world challenges based on real-world examples. They provide the UI design, image assets, fonts, colors, etc. Your job is to implement it. This reflects the bulk of Jr. positions I've seen. A designer will hand you a PDF or a design and it's your job to implement it.
I recommend completing a few of the Newbie challenges and then advancing your way up to intermediate ones. When you are comfortable completing intermediate challenges that utilize a backend and a database then you're in a position to apply to the average Jr. Web Developer positions.
You should also use the basic colors, layout, and idea to then tweak the different challenges to your own liking. Make it more "original". You should also be able to reproduce a project in multiple ways (React, Angular, web templates rendered by a server, etc) in order to prove you are not a one-trick-poney.
Also, learn how to integrate it with different deployment and hosting tools like Heroku and AWS EC2 or Elastic Beanstalk.
If you can do all that then you can objectively prove to a prospective employer your value.
Note: I've discovered that there are a number of brain-dead developers and potential hiring managers out there who thumb their noses at Frontend Mentor. They think it's a "copy and paste" system and they don't understand why every solution looks the same. You'll need to clearly articulate that it's supposed to look the same and that's the value. It proves you can execute a given task.
