>> I, like many young graduates, were tasked with finding 5-10 "less popular" journals to publish to in order to get some practice in.

Wow. That's really not standard in my experience. I'm in the UK, and the advice I always got was to try and publish only good-quality work in highly-rated venues.

I hope you can get published in one of the decent journals in your field. That's what you should be gunning for.