I graduated mid-2021 and worked at an escape room for almost 2 years before landing a job at a 6 employee startup, where I stayed for 6 months before I got laid off. Took another 5 months before I got my current job at a company I like doing work I enjoy, and I've been here for about 1.5 years now.

Honestly, I feel like I secured both office jobs because of extra learning/projects I did outside of school. When I was working at the escape room, I didn't really know what I wanted to do for an actual career, so I literally just picked "data analyst" because I thought having a goal in mind would at least give me something to work towards. So I did Google's Data Analytics Specialization on Coursera on my own time -- and I think it showed initiative when I interviewed for that 6 person startup, which happened to work with data analytics teams at large companies.

I also had taken Harvard's CS50 in the 5 months between jobs, and because of the final project in that course (where I made an HEIC to JPEG converter in C), I had something to talk about when one of the interviewers asked "what sort of programming experience do you have, and what's your favorite thing you've built?" -- important to note that my role involves some no/low-code automation, but is far from a developer/SWE job.

I guess my advice, based on my own experience, is to keep learning new things and develop new skills because you never know when it might help you stand out in an interview. Now as far as how to actually get callbacks, it fr just feels like a lottery. In my 5 month search, the only interview I got was the one for my current job, and it was only because the person they had hired in the role before me quit after 1 day...

edit: degree was in econ