How to approach usability testing for a portfolio project?

I'm transitioning into a UX/UI career from graphic design. Right now I'm working on an app redesign for my portfolio, and I don't know if usability testing is something I can afford to do. Some of my challenges are:

• I have a very limited budget and can't really afford to provide incentives for recruiting participants.
• I only have about 2-3 friends and family nearby that fit the target user.
• Given the nature of the project, I've had to design for multiple devices (PC/laptop, TV, mobile), so on a real project like this, I would anticipate having to test for each device type (about 15-20 participants in total), which would cost me a lot of time and money.
• Testing a TV app would be really inconvenient to do in a guerilla testing context. Like, it would be hard to bring a tv to a coffee shop and not draw some stares.

I've already done a lot of user and market research for this project, but I'm just unsure if the time and money investment for just usability testing is worth it when my goal is to demonstrate that I have general UX skills to employers. I also lean more toward the UI/visual side of design, so that's another factor in making this decision.

Should I bite the bullet and do the testing now? Or, should I leave it open and do as much as I can with the research I have? Would it be a deal-breaker to employers if I didn't show any testing for this type of project?