Make friends with other good engineers that are good interviewees. They will teach you some skills, and give personal references for you at their companies when you need a job. Personal references are going to get you the really good jobs, not applying online and going through the standard interview process.
That's not really true. At good companies you're still going to need to interview, even with a strong reference.
You may not need to prove yourself technically as much as someone who comes in cold, but you always need to prove that you're a good cultural fit for the team.
