Any advice, general or specific, would be appreciated.
Two: If the interviewer is asking you to do the impossible i.e. move, relocate, have super long traveling distance you say: "I have a short term plan formulated, and working on the long term one. It's an overcomable problem". You're an engineer, you can solve problems.
Three: Impress people with your CV. Write it in LaTeX. Grab some cool template here: https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/cv-or-resume If you list graduate courses in the left CV column, then format the course names as hyperlinks linking course descriptions.
Four: Giving your CV to a future employer, despite it's good-looking, full of links, and with impressive information, it won't do unless you have someone at your past uni which you can name as your reference. That person knows you, and knows the course descriptions, so that when a future employer calls, the information is concise and complements the CV.
Five: Throw yourself in deep waters (figuratively). Problem solvers work best when solving problems is literally part of their strife.
Keep working on your projects. Pick the 3 CS subjects closest to the sort of job you're looking for and read the related materials to keep up a minimal theoretical background.
Good luck!
I've considered removing the year range that I spent at uni, or at least making it clear that I don't, in fact, have a degree.
The base line assumption is that you list education you completed (graduated), so anything less is likely to 'dissapoint' the recruiter.
If you can repackage what you did in university as discrete 'experience' that might give you the chance to establish a positive narrative ('I was well qualified for university but found the CS program too theoretical so decided to pursue a different path.')
Thanks for the advice, by the way. :)
Avoid recruiters, if you have low-hit ratio with them.
Focus instead on talking with actual hiring managers. You'll have better luck connecting with small, local companies, less than 100 people. Start building your portfolio and CV from there.