Hi! Not a programmer but I am an engineer and end up in coding circlesish online most of the time, along with being a guy with opinions on CS; the best advice I would go for is to actually make something. I do sincerely believe that CS is, at its core all about implementation, if you can talk about something you did--it doesn't have to be anything actually serious, just do something fun that would help you in your life, play Minecraf on a server? Make a database of capitalism on that server if it has capitalism in some form. Make a mod for a game you play, concepts are easy enough to Google, actually making a project being a boots on the ground problem solver? That's what you're being hired for.
That's at least my 2 cents in the matter. Good luck!