I think an internship either in the summer or as a part of your semester is a very nice way to get your feet wet in the industry. It's also important to have good mentorship and actually build something during your internship.
My first taste with the industry was actually an internship as a part of my final semester in college, three years ago. I luckily had the chance to learn a lot and it helped me shape my future in a very very good way. I was pursuing a CS degree, but didn't quite know how the industry worked back then.
It was a backend engineering internship and until my first day, I didn't know what MongoDB was or what 'GET', 'PUT', 'POST' and 'DELETE' were. I learnt a huge deal though, so much that by the first weekend, I had started shipping API's. I matured into the backend engineer role during the course of my internship and was offered a job at the place I interned at when I graduated. I also learnt a huge deal about websockets and elasticsearch and went on to build a lot of APIs for WEYV.
So, if you're in college and have the chance to get an internship, you should totally go for it. If you have already graduated, I would recommend building some side projects and apply for a full time role.