>>7621854You only get hired through connections which = cronyism. It's not really about your work, it's about how much you can get someone else to vouch for you. Plenty of people who were in the overhiring phase of the last half decade didn't have the amount of time to really make good connections because they barely had time to get established and a lot of it was WFH. Others basically finished their education/training during that time, when networking was retarded because of all the study-from-home shit. And then were faced with the market dumping positions, so they ended up with debt and no job.
"Just get to know people" is literally cronyism. It's not about your portfolio, because your portfolio is kneecapped to whatever crumbs you can negotiate out with your employer or do on your own time. You rarely will get credited in final productions in ways that actually connects your work to your name, as what a concept artist makes is by definition NOT for the light of day, it's internal material.
This is why a lot turned to teaching, but many do it poorly and in a lazy way. So many art channels on youtube are shilling some kind of crappy class.