A couple of eitzahs:
1) Try to pick a career or path in life and truly excel in it. This will make you desirable. Start early and don’t waste precious years. Even before you are ready to go out you need to lay a foundation.
2) Be kind and bubbly and warm, and people will want to be around you.
3) Dress well and be squeaky clean. Get regular haircuts and try to keep as fit as possible. I have seen people whom most would consider to be not that attractive naturally, present themselves so well that they look like a million bucks, and everyone wants to be around them. Anybody can do this.
4) The number one rule is confidence. No matter what your situation, if you come across as confident (doesn’t mean bossy), people automatically think you are very attractive. Look at some of these top executives in Microsoft or other companies. They don’t look like much, but since they are confident and well-dressed, they are perceived as being movie stars. Inner confidence comes with knowing that you are worth something to the world, and are good at something you do. Not that you try to fool people or brag. It means you have accomplished something that you and only you are proud of or may even know about. It is a quiet confidence. Bragging comes across as a total lack of confidence. Be real, not a fake.
If your self-worth only comes from clinging on to and being accepted by a certain crowd, then you are a follower and not a leader. That turns people off.
5) Develop confidence in your appearance, and don’t underestimate yourself. Realize that Hashem has created the koach of attraction in this world, and that people are probably far more attracted to you than you realize. Unless you are a green martian from mars, people will automatically be attracted to you. If you think of yourself as dumpy, others will, too.
6) Try to control anger. It scares people.
7) Do huge amounts of chesed, and people will see you have a good heart.
8) When dating, look at whether the other person attracts you and you enjoy being with him or her and their midos, not at externals like what will people say, her yichus is nothing outstanding, they are not known to have money, she went to a different seminary than I prefer, etc. The rest is all baloney.
9) Focus on your goals, and people will see the quality in you, and will want to set you up, and will even ask to be set up with you. A shidduch is not a goal, it is the acquisition of a mate to help you achieve your goals. Once you get married, if you have no goals, your spouse will lose all respect for you, and you will be in for rocky times.
10) Even handicapped people can polish and present themselves so well that people are very attracted to them. Nobody should give up hope.