if your background doesn't make people immediately assume you can do the job, you need another way to help them see it i remember how frustrating that felt. i knew i could solve problems, but getting someone to take that seriously was its own problem that's why i keep talking about personal projects and building in public degrees and years of experience still matter to hiring managers. they're useful evidence when somebody is deciding whether to bet on you you can give them more evidence pick a problem relevant to the work you want. build something useful around it. show the decisions you made, where it broke, and how you checked the result then get that work in front of people who understand the problem “here's something i built around a problem your team works on” gives them something concrete to engage with