Getting a junior frontend job in Germany without a relevant degree

I didn't have a relevant degree, and I won't pretend the search was easy. I'd come to Germany as an international worker hoping to break into tech, with a self-taught frontend skill set and a portfolio I'd built through online courses and personal projects. From the outside it probably looked like a long shot. From the inside it felt like one too. The rejections piled up fast. We're talking hundreds. Some were automated no-replies, some were polite one-liners, and a few were detailed enough to sting. Every time a promising application went cold, I had to talk myself out of reading too much into it. What kept things moving was persistence and casting a wide net through the right channels. I was active on LinkedIn, Xing, and Germany's Make-it-in-Germany program, which exists specifically to help international workers find their way through the local job market. LinkedIn was where I got the most traction. I tightened up my profile, started connecting with recruiters directly, and put my portfolio links front and center. I tried to treat each rejection as a data point, not a verdict. If my HTML and CSS projects weren't getting attention, I pushed harder on JavaScript. If a cover letter wasn't landing, I rewrote it. Slow, unglamorous ↓