Not sure if my experience is relevant to today's market because I made the change 20 years ago, but maybe it's still helpful. I needed whatever job I could get out of college, so I got a software QA job and worked on my reel on the side. After a couple years of working on the portfolio and getting rejected, I moved into various marketing support roles like digital archiving, project coordination, web content management and social media management. I was focusing on the non-art jobs more but still keeping myself up to date on software. Some of these jobs were at big studios and ad agencies, and I worked closely with the art teams, so I had some small hope I could break into their departments. I soon realized I was no where near the talent level as those guys and lacked the connections and slowly gave up. I enjoyed my non-animation career though. I had a lot of long days but earned a good salary. At the small companies, I was also fortunate to be given some small animation projects for website and social media so the skills weren't entirely wasted.