Is entry level experience important regardless of the field?

Each employer will be different. Some may frown more upon quickly starting and then leaving a job, but for someone just coming out of college who is trying to figure out for sure what they want to do, I think the list is short on employers that would hold it against you. If you applied for a job and an employer viewed it as a negative thing that you had been trying to figure out where you wanted to work right after coming out of college, you should view it as a warning sign. You probably don't want to be working for a company that thinks that way. Any decent employer should respect that a recent graduate tried out a few different jobs in the first couple years and see it as a good and healthy (mentally) thing for any person to do. In a few years, if looking at a new job, the fact that you had solid jobs that you showed up for on time and weren't fired from should be a positive. Now if you had been jumping job to job every 6 months for the past 10 years, that might be a problem.