Physics PhD who just got a job in industry. While I can’t tell you the exact thought processes of my interviewers, I got the impression they were impressed by my being the lead developer and architect of a library. You may not have the opportunity to build something that can be posted on the web, but if you see any such option you should grab it. Failing that, you could try to make some contributions to an open-source project (there are any number of them on GitHub), or to start building a small game. In short, try to build up a portfolio that you can publicly point at and say “I built that”.
Additionally, there seems to be a somewhat standard set of algorithms and big-O analysis questions that interviewers return to; you could do a lot worse than just reviewing some basic comp-sci cheat sheets. This also means that practice makes perfect on interviews—it is not the case that each one is a unique gem of highly specific knowledge. So you could even just apply for some jobs right now, go to the interviews with no expectation or intention of being hired, and see what sort of thing you should learn.
Physics PhD who just got a job in industry. While I can’t tell you the exact thought processes of my interviewers, I got the impression they were impressed by my being the lead developer and architect of a library. You may not have the opportunity to build something that can be posted on the web, but if you see any such option you should grab it. Failing that, you could try to make some contributions to an open-source project (there are any number of them on GitHub), or to start building a small game. In short, try to build up a portfolio that you can publicly point at and say “I built that”.
Additionally, there seems to be a somewhat standard set of algorithms and big-O analysis questions that interviewers return to; you could do a lot worse than just reviewing some basic comp-sci cheat sheets. This also means that practice makes perfect on interviews—it is not the case that each one is a unique gem of highly specific knowledge. So you could even just apply for some jobs right now, go to the interviews with no expectation or intention of being hired, and see what sort of thing you should learn.