There’s a lot of ways to increase your chances during the job search. The main focus overall however is asking yourself how can I stand out?
For entry level jobs competition is fierce, so standing out for a job is paramount for having any kind of chance at all. If your resume and portfolio look the same as everyone else’s you wont get the job, no matter how many jobs you apply to as other people with the same resume and portfolio will do the same.
Being able to stand out can be anything, from a networking opportunity, past experiences, to even just your background and location relative to a job.
I usually say applying to jobs is its own skill, as you’re essentially selling yourself. So yes improving your skills, resume and portfolio can help you, but so can investing time in your “pitch” and your prospective companies you’re applying to. If you’re sending the exact same contents to every job, you might be missing out on some of that “pitch specific” approaches.
Generally you only need to get a job once, you also should be getting feedback throughout all the jobs your applying to, so you should get a better understanding if your close and need to tweak your approach, or if your ways off and need to come back to the job-game with a little more experience in key areas.
You can get this feeling without a job, or with a job years down the line. There’s always more things to learn, and more things to do. In some ways it can help drive you to do better, greater things, it can also feel daunting and “overwhelming”.
I personally usually just put my head down and pick something up. There won’t be a day when I suddenly know everything, rather every day I try to learn something. I find it less overwhelming if it’s seen as a journey to enjoy, rather than a marathon to finish.
The “objectiveness” of the situation of job searching is as plain as:
You should know what you know, and see what they seek. From there you need to match what you know with what they seek as best as possible.
You might not feel qualified, or “an imposture”, for a job, but how you feel about it doesn’t change the objective fact you want the job, and may or may not have the experience required for it.
If you feel like your missing key attributes the job is asking for, you will have much worse chances when applying. How you feel about it doesn’t change how the company will receive your resume. Because of this, the energy you have should go into improving the objective nature of the problem, not so much on the subjective idea that you might not feel good enough.
Your resume, background, experience and “pitch” approach to a company should speak for itself. If it works great! If it doesn’t, then gather feedback on why, and improve.
An “Impostor syndrome” feeling is nearly impossible to get away from during a job search, as most of the time you’re only searching as you don’t have the job, so by this nature you’re aren’t necessarily an impostor, as that implies you have what you want, but don’t feel qualified for it. In a job search scenario you don’t have what you want, and might not feel qualified for it.
The best you can do is put your head down and get to the task at hand and put your energy into it.
Good luck, keep learning, keep building 