[wwweston]

> More often than not, companies reject my job applications saying something like: "Unfortunately, your skill sets were not a match for this position", when their job description is an exact match for my skill set

While it's hard not to, it's almost never a good idea to take a generic rejection like this at face value. This is one of a number of things prospective employers just say when they've decided to hire someone else, usually designed to give as little insight as possible as to why they made the decision they did (and along with it, as little exposure to liability).

And common hiring practices being what they are (possibly as bad as random chance as far as getting people who are in fact good fits), it's likely enough that they didn't really have much in the way of insight into your skills. And may not really be clear on why they made the choices they did.

So, it may not be you.

That said, even as a fellow explorer/hiker/kayaker who likes to have other things to do when I'm not at work... some well-selected personal projects are probably a good idea to have. They may not need to be big ones, even small ones that scratch a personal itch might help with employers who use a github profile as a heuristic for engaged interest in the field. I'm thinking of a little Python script I wrote about a year ago, its sole purpose was to list unix permissions for each directory above the current one, something I occasionally need to do when tracking down reasons why a webserver might deny access to resources located within a directory. There was a period right after I'd created it and put it up on github that I was getting recruiting interest as a Python dev. But something related to your MS might even be a better idea.