Having a friend helps A LOT. Without getting into details, that's kiiiiind of the main reason I didn't get that promotion I mentioned in my original post. :') And a lot of people were very angry about it. But I digress.
I also got my friend into the company while I was working there, so that definitely only furthers the point, but there were plenty of people on my team who did get the job just from applying. Like I said, it was sort of a lower on the totem pole job, but it got us into the company and many of us went on to do bigger and better things at the company (and fingers crossed I'll be joining that club too, though no matter what, I got some great resume material out of it). My friend sure as hell would have never gotten her job as a production assistant if she had just applied to it from outside of the company. She got it because she was working on the capture specialist team, a producer needed an assistant, and they just grabbed a reliable person from the capture team. I'm not sure if the job was even posted. And that's how it is a lot of times. So many jobs are claimed by people already in the company or grabbed by them before people outside even know they exist. And that's a huge benefit of getting into the company, even in a lower-end position.

As for an in between job, dude like. There are better places than fast food. Do you have a Trader Joes or Whole Foods near you? I hear those are great to work at and are really nice to their employees, at least in comparison to things like fast food. The grocery store I worked a definitely wasn't like an ideal job, but it sure as hell beat fast food. There are also a ton of retail options. I have friends that are pretty content at PetCo/Petsmart and there's even places like Target that I swear are always hiring. I have a friend who's very, very content as a server (waiter/waitress) too and always recommends it to people. I know she makes pretty decent money too.

I was an Assistant Animator. It wasn't easy to land an art job here. Almost ALL the animation studio I've sent application to ignored me. I don't know anyone within the industry. Also, I didn't graduate from art school so that put me in a dire disadvantage. But one day I got an email from the owner of one animation studio here and offered to train me and eventually they gave me a position to work there. I'm super grateful that they helped me kickstart their career even tho I've left the studio to be a freelancer.

My first professional job in the art business was working for a small gaming company as a concept artist. I was responsible for providing the character art, full body illustrations and closeup profile pictures of each character as well. I think the toughest part of all was coming up with the proper vision of each character, based on written descriptions and references alone, at least it was a hard task for me back then. I'm a freelance artist full time now so the jobs are a lot more sporadic and unpredictable now.

My first art job was a long term contract as a production artist. I was illustrating and animating Flash icons. I got that job by tailoring my thin resume to their job description, then filling my portfolio with vector art. I will admit that when I applied I didn't think I would get it as the job description asked for way more experience than I had. I also hadn't even finished school yet, so I didn't have the "required" degree. As for my next jobs, I was able to use some work I produced from my previous positions to add to my portfolio, as well as some personal work.

My suggestion is apply for anything you are even partially qualified for. Don't let the education or experience requirements deter you. Often times those requirements are there from HR to filter out the really unqualified. Also, having to hire people as an artist I often paid more attention to an applicant's portfolio, and if they seemed to have ongoing personal projects. In my current position I almost didn't apply because I didn't meet the job description very well, but I got it and am awesome at my job, and glad I went ahead and went for it. Advice I have gotten is that you should expect to learn up to 40% on the job. As @60Six mentions you may end up doing something that is sort of related to what you went to school for, but you actually might be better at. In my case I do eLearning design and User Experience design, totally different than what I imagined when I graduated.

Ultimately you want to try to land some interviews, even if you don't end up getting the job you will get better at interviews when the "right" job comes along.

Also, fill out that portfolio, either by doing small paid projects, or giving yourself assignments.

I was a 2D artist for a mobile gaming company! I did concept art, textures for 3D models, some illustrations, and some marketing graphics. Basically just anything they needed. It was a small company and I got laid off in 9 months, but a lot of my coworkers are my friends to this day and we all help each other out with jobs. I'm in the midwest so it's pretty hard to find anything art related and stable (especially outside of graphic design).

I got that job itself through a recommendation from my college. I applied for the internship first but my skills were good enough for them to hire me on full time immediately, so that was pretty cool! I might've still gotten it even without the college's good graces, but it definitely helped my application along.

If you don't have many jobs in your area, you can always apply for remote contract work. I work remotely right now and it's working out just fine with us. It's become much more common in this age since we have email and ways to share files easily! Especially if you work in 3D, there may be a lot of opportunities for you online.

Wait so is it better to have ongoing personal projects or not? I cant tell because I could argue both (possibly prioritizing personal project vs showing dedication and work done)

If you don't want to commit to your own website domain yet, you can always try out a portfolio site! I have one on Carbonmade6 that I use for applications. It's really easy to customize, too, so if you need to tailor your portfolio for a specific job on the fly it's real easy to do. This is my portfolio10 if you want an example.

My first ever job which i'm currently at is a vfx/graphic design studio. I got in because one of my bosses was a teacher....

... I think it would've taken me 3 years at least to get any gig because despite my skillsets the people interviewing me did not give a shit about me because no one knew me. It's about knowing people and connections and I just didn't have any :/

My first graphic design job was way too good for my skills. By that, I mean that I shouldn't have been given the job because I wasn't good enough. Only now, 2 years later, do I realise that.

I'd been training to be a designer for only a year when I found out that a fairly large company needed a designer. I have found their vacancy here https://jobofmine.com1 I decided to give it a shot even though I thought I probably wouldn't get the job. Even if I didn't get it, it would have been good interview experience.

I walked in there with a portfolio full of work I'd made up, and basically tried to be as nice and as knowledgeable as my limited experience allowed me to be. I ended up getting the job, somehow.

Anyway, it was great

My first "job" was more of a small gig as I just searched all around the internet for anyone publishing comics and needed help with layout/typesetting. Eventually, I was able to find a very small publisher who was looking for help with their book layout. I was paid $100 for it. Wasn't much but it helped.

Then I worked for the Digital Manga Guild as a typesetter which, as many probably know, was pretty terrible. It was a lot of work for almost no pay (I worked on 4 books I think and was paid just over $100), but again, it helped a bit and was another thing to put on my resume.

The place I found to work part time was as a salesperson at an art "gallery". Well, we liked to call it a gallery, but it was mostly just selling random, cool art stuff. It wasn't a bad job and I ended up working there for 5 years.

I kept searching around for other jobs and eventually did find a paid "internship" at a place that made class rings and they were basically looking for people to do some grunt work of redrawing things in Illustrator. It also helped a lot and allowed me to work around my current schedule so I had two part time jobs for a while.

That lasted about 7 or 8 months and then the internship ended. Even though they were hiring and did say we would have a chance to be hired, they didn't hire anyone from the internship... they ended up hiring a completely new person... with the same amount of experience and a really annoying voice so I don't know what was up with that.

No biggie since right after that I was finally able to get my first full time graphic design job! The application process was shady though since they did a "test", but it ended up being a legit job just at a startup with no idea of what they were doing. I was still able to work there about 3 or 4 years and survived several rounds of layoffs until my time finally came.

Finding a job after that, now that I had experience, was a nightmare. I sent out SOOO many resumes and received ZERO back. I just don't even know how that was possible. When I was job searching while working, I actually had a phone interview and the person told me I was one of two or three people even qualified for the job I applied for, but now I got nothing. I think it's because designers are a dime a dozen, employers think anyone who has touched Photoshop can do professional design work, and everybody already "knows" somebody or knows someone who knows someone and just hires them through word of mouth.

Which is how I got my current job... My old boss was laid off before I was and was now working at a new, more established company, and was able to get me in.

So, yeah... mostly it is knowing someone and getting lucky. Don't expect simply sending out resumes to get anything back, but your resume should still look PERFECT.