How and by what means can a novice tester, who has mastered only the theory so far, get the first experience?

Question

Software testing

Perhaps you can suggest any resources, utilities, programs for studying.
Ready to take on free work - just to get invaluable experience

Answer 1

How and by what means can a novice tester, who has mastered only the theory so far, get the first experience?

Obviously, having mastered the theory, it is worth moving on to practice.
Freelancing, unfortunately, is not an option. Especially for a beginner. So the only option is to look for a job.
Go through the testing hubs on Habré. There are not many posts there, but they have many links to specialized resources, blogs of testers.
Monitor vacancies, see requirements. Of the most common, I can name Selenium, JIRA, SQL, XML, Git, HTML, CSS, JS, Python, Java, C#, Jenkins. Naturally, GNU/Linux or Windows.
Are you sure that work without pay is always so "priceless"?

Answer 2

If we talk about web testing, I can advise the following:
If we talk about non-Web testing, then by analogy. I personally prefer to test the Web, for me it's more interesting.
When I switched from Desktop to Web, I myself wrote a Web application in Python, one of the functions of which was to send different types of letters, and then I tested it myself. Then I began to learn how to work with the API using curl and the requests library in Python. Well, and so consistently began to get testing experience.
By the way, the course from mail.ru is indicated in the next branch, I also liked it: What does a novice tester need to know?