I’ve recently have been having the unsavory experience of not being employed full time. I thought I’d share my experience with everyone in the hopes they don’t make the same mistakes I did!

JOB RECRUITERS
Job recruiters are the necessary hurdle you have to deal with. The benefit of a job recruiter is that they get paid by getting you a job, and its in their best interested to get you more money. I find that Job recruiters tend to ask for more money on my behalf then I would ever ask for. Keep in mind that they tend to take a percentage of the money for themselves and you are never aware of how much–all you are told is how much they have worked out to get for you.

NEVER TELL A JOB RECRUITER WHERE YOU HAVE INTERVIEWED RECENTLY. They will ask to “know where you are on the field”, or something to that degree, but its some times a lie. As told to me by one recruiter, some recruiting firms make it a policy for their people to ask this simply to find out where there is a position available that they don’t know of, and then try to steal that job away from you by sending someone else for cheaper.

Having said that, not all job recruiters are bad people.  Its best to find a handful that you feel you can trust and work closely with them from there.

CREATIVE FIRMS
Similar to a job recruiter firm, a creative firm will actually “hire” you and have you work as a temp for them. Again, they get a cut and you’re never told how much. Some people prefer to work for creative firms, but keep in mind that sometimes its hard to get a foot in the door with them.

One experience I had was with a firm that I had previously applied for positions several times. They eventually contacted me on their own from finding my resume online and had me come in for a meeting. They had asked me if I had any experience with them before and I had mentioning applying online for their listed positions. They replied with, “oh don’t bother with that, frankly all those e-mails go to a black hole somewhere.”

Again, creative temp firms are fine for some people, but make sure to find one that fits into your own work needs. Each one has their own style, some are more corporate and others are a bit flexible. Some only to part time hiring, some temp to hire, etc. If you do get an interview with these, make sure to ask questions. Also, after a few weeks and a good job doesn’t come your way, make sure to e-mail them to keep you on their radar.

EMPLOYMENT WEBSITE LISTINGS
By far, the best job employment site that I know of is Indeed.com. I do check a long laundry list of sites for work, but what I find is that a good chunk of posting on other sites are posted by job recruiters and temp firms. To avoid this, indeed.com works as a search engine for job listings that you may not find via other online job sites. You can also search by location and salary range, which is excellent.

Below is a list of site I look at in my regular routine in a job hunt. Typically I try to apply to 2-4 companies a day, with 20 e-mails being the magic number to get a response back for a in-person interview. This has lead me to an interview once every other week or so. So far I’ve had interviewed with 5 or so companies–and when I figure out what I’m doing wrong with the in person interview I’ll let you guys know!

The Usual Job Hunting Sites:
• Monster.com – Not the best site, but one of the biggest, its definitely worth a quick look.
• Careerbuilder.com – Similar to monster, its a mega Job hunting site. I prefer the way the jobs are listed when you do a search, its easy to see how much the salary will be and other additional info. I have had more luck with this site then I have monster.
• Dice.com – More of a tech job site, but I do find listings here that I don’t see elsewhere. They do have a small amount of web design jobs available.
• Cybercoders.com – I check out this site too, but its almost all job recruiters. Some are not that well associated with the site, and there has been rumors of some trying to scam job hunters, so don’t give out any personal info via e-mail when talking to these people.

God luck with the job hunt!

Reposted from my old design blog, 2009-12-15.

I wanted to make a note about the shootorials on Kongregate.com. They are a decent starting point for a shooting game. I would highly suggest following the AS3 version that a user created.

I rent through the gauntlet and made my own demo game from it, so its a workable tutorial. You can find it here.

My one complaint is that like with many tutorials I come across, they walk you through to a certain point, then say “ok! now have at it!” while not really laying the groundwork to expand upon the tutorial. At some point I want to write a tutorial that will have some meat to the skeleton–once completed, the student will have a reasonable way to create levels, introduce new game mechanics, etc.

Reposted from my old developer blog, 2009-09-02.

Penguin Ocean Fun Time

(Link to “Penguin Ocean Fun Time” via Kongregate)

This little game pictured above is something I put together based off of several tutorials. Most of the work comes from the amazing Avoider Tutorial. I’ve only gotten into doing heavier scripting since AS3, most of my previous scripting was in AS2 for generic flash websites and the overly annoying flash intros. The gap between AS2 and AS3 can be a large one, so I would recommend ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University. I feel there is something to be grained from the clarity of the material in a professionally written book. At any rate, it is a good starting point.

Reposted from my old developer blog, 2009-07-09.

Hi everyone.

I wanted to start a web developer blog with an emphasis on flash and javascript. I will be posting links to resources and other projects I think that would be helpful to the community. Also, I will be posting updates to my personal projects.

I hope that by sharing my processes and thoughts, it can somehow help others in some way. I hope personally I’ve trolled through several blogs and fourms, trying to find that one ioda of knowledge that just was beyond my grasp.

With that in mind, here is a short list of some of my favorite resources:

Commerical Sites

• Mochi Ads ( http://www.mochiads.com) – if you make flash games, this site is almost a must. Not only will this site provide you with advertisements for your games as well as stat keeping for your player’s accounts, but it also will help you analyze and track the grown of your games across multiple websites.
• Kongregate (http://www.kongregate.com) – my favorite flash site. The main draw to this flash game portal is the integration of achievements and points that boost your raiting on the site. Recently that have been dabbling in usergenerated content, so it is worth a look.
• Smart Fox Servers (http://www.smartfoxserver.com) – probably not for the ususal developer, but smart fox servers host backend servers to popular multiplayer flash games such as Club Penguin.

Blogs and Porfolios

• Michael James Willaims (http://gamedev.michaeljameswilliams.com) – Michael has a very good flash tutorial that goes over the basics of an “Avioder Game” in AS3, which can be developed further into other games.
• BABARAGEO (http://babarageo.com/e) – I’m adding this to my list just as an inspirational site to a set of uniquely designed games.
• Emanuele Feronato (http://www.emanueleferonato.com) – One of the best flash developer blogs out there, Emanuele covers a wide array of topics, from monetization, to flash physics engines.
• Doogog (http://doogog.com) – A personal friend of mine, “Doogog” has a simple solution for the issue of preloaders in Actionscript 3. Also he has two neat games up on his blog.

Thanks for reading this and I hope this is helpful. Please feel free to share you comments, as any infromation you can add always helps someone out there!

Thanks for checking this out.  I’ve been not that big on words as of late, but I wanted to put something up that was a bit more detailed on this site.

THINKLIKEMIKE is a website where I post my recent projects and works.  Also I hope to put up some helpful information about web art and graphic design. My hope is that people can learn and use the knowledge to be more creative.