You have to balance interest against need. My job search strategy heavily prioritizes interest. I will watch videos from conferences who overlap technologies I enjoy. For any speaker I enjoy I note their company. I will use LinkedIn to find similar companies. I have a quota I usually set to myself for every week, like 20 applications a week. Up until Wednesday I can apply to anything I want, by the end of the week I have to hit my quota no matter what. This alternating between jobs I want and jobs I am qualified for keeps your mind engaged in different ways.
I don't use competition listing sites for interviews. No hacker rank, don't care if my github is green, no project Euler. I don't apply to companies that require this.
In the evenings do coding problems on a whiteboard or clean paper. Being able to debug written code increases your ability to communicate about that code. Good teachers interview well, they are not necessarily the best employees but they interview very well.
When you get an interview, it helps to show some strong confidence. During the first phone screen make it clear that your intention is to complete any interview that you've gotten past the first phone screen. Let them know that you will inform them and all other active circuits upon a first job offer in order so they can prioritize closing out your circuit. This sets the mood for your communication going forward