I only have a very small set of companies I would ever want to work for which is a huge plus, because I just check their career pages. Small local security/pent

I only have a very small set of companies I would ever want to work for which is a huge plus, because I just check their career pages. Small local security/pentest companies. Worked twice so far. I'm just lucky tho and I know it. What I think helps a bit is: I'm very personal in my emails and brutally honest, like I'll tell them all the bad things explicitly in the first 5 sentences (bad education, dropout). No formal greeting "Hey, my name is X and I...". I also do have some work public (code + vuln diclosures) which has helped.