After a little tinkering I was able to figure out what was missing from my symlink setup. For anyone else attempting the solution that Walter mentioned, here are a few extra details based on what I had to do to make it work.
The issue boiled down to permissions of the network share, and I wasn't able to provide the default "ApplicationPoolIdentity" with the necessary permissions. To resolve this I did the following
1. Created a specific user on the web server and set the application pool to use this new user.
2. In the advanced settings of the application pool, set "Load User Profile" to "True"
3. Add the credentials for the network share to the user created for the application pool. This post helped https://superuser.com/questions/537697/manage-another-users-credentials-for-network-access. Alternatively if you log into the server using the new app pool user, navigate to the network share path and when it prompts for credentials enter them and select the option to remember them.
4. create your symlinks to the network share folders using mklink command.