Employers need to sort and filter through many candidates, they see many CVs and cover letters which, some of them may not appear very distinct to employers. Therefore, in order to bolster your CV and hence, your chances, there are a number of side projects which you can undertake to do so.
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Programming projects / UI UX designs / other portfolios - by linking your website or GitHub repository, you demonstrate the range of projects that you have undertaken, you show comprehensive evidence of the skills, technologies and methods that you have acquired
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Offering your IT skills for small businesses and startups - you can offer or volunteer your IT skills to make a website, UI UX design, manage and maintain IT systems, etc, for small businesses, which will both provide experience for you but also give you more to write about in your CV, as well as benefitting the business
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Partaking in research papers, tech journals or other publications - by participating in research, you would be contributing to tech in general, advancing efforts in innovation and further discovery
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Contributions to open source projects - this is a great way to work and learn on real enterprise codebases and software, and it is experience which would be valued by employers