@alyssam_infosec There's a pervasive fear of hiring entry level infosec folks - it's a big impediment, not just for the applicants, but also for companies who are starving for talent.

As a hiring manager, I'm quite aware of how easy it is to manufacture the perception of work product, to have friends talk you up, etc. It can be a useful datapoint but rarely does that contribute heavily to the final decision.

What does contribute: being able to talk competently about concepts and techniques, the ability to transfer knowledge laterally between domains. Open source and hobby work also tends to speak for itself, both in terms of their motivation, and generally being able to see their raw output, rather than (gilded) descriptions of it.