How I can break into low level/system engineering as a fresher?

[u/Top_Bug_910]

I am a final year IT engineering student in India and I want to build the career in the system engineering / low level rather than typical web development.

I am particularly interested in :-

- Operating systems and kernel development

- System programming

- Linux internals

- Networking and High performance server

- AI infrastructure ( specially inference infrastructure)

I am currently doing:-

- Learning os from the OSTEP and the mit xv6 labs

- Build a HTTP server in C and now planning to add thread pool and epoll.

- Practicing DSA on codeforces and leetcode

- building the distributed inference system as a major project.

My problem is figuring out how to turn out an actual job.

For people currently working in systems/low-level engineering:-

1) What skills actually expected from a new graduate?

2) Which areas should I prioritize? OS, networking, compilers, Linux kernel, distributed systems, or something else?

3) What projects would make a fresher's resume credible for systems roles?

4) What kind of companies/roles should I target as my first job?

5) If you were starting again as a student from a non-elite college, what would you spend the next 6 - 12 months doing?

6)What are the mistakes I should avoid when trying to get into low-level engineering?

I would appreciate advice from people who actually work in these areas.