Triton

When you do not have any real-life designing experience and you're trying to get a job, there are 3 parts 1. Practise the craft 2. Apply the practice 3. Show and tell both the Practice and Application

New designers tend to do all the 3 things in the same project. While point 3 can be done independently, it's unlikely that you can practise and apply things in the same project.

For a practice project, the point is to do it multiple times, hopefully with better and better results. Therefore, smaller projects make more sense. Fill your Dribbble with a hundred shots. Do a hundred hour-long user research exercises for random existing products. Do hundred unsolicited redesign projects.

You're learning to think in a particular way.

Now that you've practiced your craft, you should try to find real-life applications. This is where unsolicited work, redesigns, etc would not be as much help. You want to reach out to people who badly need designers but can't find them or can't afford them. Talk to your favourite coffee place and see if he wants a logo. Get in touch with the creator of an open-source project with some users and see if they want a facelift. Ping a just-launched startup and ask them if they'd like you to do some user research.

This is where you'd get your validation. Turns out the coffee place has a different design aesthetic and you need to learn how to take that into consideration. Turns out the open source project doesn't have resources to develop the shiny redesign you did and you need to learn to work under constraints. Turns out it's easier to do user research than to convince the startup the need to act on the results.

This is when to you learn how to deal with real-life problems, not just design problems. You need both to succeed as a designer.

Don't forget to document all of this, you'd still need a portfolio.