Graphic jobs are a tough call to get, even if your creative skills are good… the salary has been devalued by over supply, for instance when I left college in Glasgow there were 40 students in my course (+ about another 100 if you factor other design courses in my area) alone chasing about 3 jobs… that was in the boom too!
That said, I got lucky and have been designing since '96… to make more money you tend to do less design, I am now a senior designer and it is about 60% design/creative/artwork and about 40% admin/workload management.
I have hired a fair few designers and creative skills (i.e. portfolio and relevant experience) are what its all about… not too worried that one person has a degree and another doesn't. Also, not too arty… I have seen some work that is TOO creative… it's got to be commercial, your job is to work to tight deadlines and meet clients needs – sometimes designers can be self indulgent.
If you can work industry standard software well… Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop if your a print designer, are VERY organised and don't flap under pressure, have an nice clean design style and a good grasp of layout/typography and passionate about design – you will be fine.
I would be wary of starting a career in a printer / copy shop as it wont do your folio any good, I found that doing some cheap, freelance work helped lots, it showed interviewers that I could actually send a job to print, and manage the design process.
Plain college folios are rarely enough as it is not live work and deadlines tend to be stupidly long (i.e. 2 weeks for a branding project).