[michaelbuckbee]

I've had the same experience, but just wanted to sum this up as it's advice I've given to others: make side projects public.

This doesn't even have to be fancy, even just a list of projects on your own personal site with links to Github and what you learned/what you hoped to accomplish.

Having the public list is also good as many times the projects might be done at the behest of a company or you don't have a good way to "show" them so it's your chance to write them up and get "credit" for your work on them.