If you can beat competition then you will get a job. It is just as easy as that. But on the other hand there is a lot of competition. Almost every youngster today dreams of getting a multimedia job. So only the best of the best will survive.

If you take the programming route then you will get a job in certain areas like AI programming, shader programming, tools programming.

If you decide for the shader route then it is not enough to create a shader from NVidia exsamples or with tools like Rendermonkey. You should understand the 3d math the lighting theory and you should be able to apply that with the programming languages like CG or HLSL. If you can do that then you get a job easily.

If you want to take the art route then it will be tough as well. Yes, you can show nice screenshots and portfolios but please have a look at 3dtotal or cg-society. You will realize that an artist is only a little light on the huge firmament of the cg sky. There are so much talented people out there and so much people with such a big amount of passion that they never stop, they will always work, even for free and love their job as much as they love their own lives. If you dont have only a little sparkle of this passion then you cannot compete.

I know a few people made up to 3 internships, for free, no payment and full-time (12 hours a day) just to get into the game industry. And this is reality here in Europe. This works because there are so many young and talented people with a big urge to get into it. Many work for free and the big publishers are the winner at the end.

Level designing is a tough job also. Did you ever listen to the commentary mode in HL2 games or Riddick? They tell you how they observed playtesters and changed their maps again and again to make them perfect, to create good lighting, game-play, learning-curves, much fun and minimal frustration.

And yes, there are passionated level-designers working for free in the modding scene. Many of them are very good and it will be hard to beat them especially if you want to earn much more money with less experience.

So what can you do? First you have to learn, to read, to work and you have to do that for free a few years until you are a well-known person with good references. Then you can start to make money but you need to find other potential customers than the hobby and indie devs.