Blog Posts about Graphics & Web Design

While, in general, I’d prefer to interview face-to-face, the phone screen interview does have its place during the initial selection process.  Here is how to use the phone screen interview process to your advantage as the candidate.

You don’t normally have to go looking for recruiters.  They usually find you.  Just place your resume at some of the most popular job boards and it’s “open season” on recruiters seeking you out to fill their contract jobs.  When you are unemployed, that can certainly be a good thing.  I’ve found, however, that not all recruiters are created equally.  Some are not worth your time and are just not a good match to help you.

When I lost my job at the end of November, I knew that it couldn’t have come at a worse time.  There were those that told me that there would be few opportunities through the end of the year, and as hard as I worked to try to prove them wrong, they weren’t.

The 17 Days of Giveaways ran each weekday July 9-31. We gave our fans eBooks, Amazon gift cards, and more. Thank you to our fans, old and new, for participating. We hope that you had fun. Thanks for all the retweets, blog posts, and Facebook likes. We’re so sad we couldn’t give everyone a prize! Please sign up for our newsletter to stay updated on our latest news and product offerings, and maybe some upcoming contests with more opportunities to win!

We have reached the end of yet another week of InformIT giveaways. We're wrapping up Mobile Programming week with a $25 Amazon gift card, which three lucky winners will receive! For our winners who missed out on this week's other giveaways, you might want to use that gift card for:

For the twelfth day of giveaways, we are giving three winners an eBook copy of iOS Prgramming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide, 3E by Joe Conway and Aaron Hillegass. These two instructors from the Big Nerd Ranch lead you through the essential concepts, tools, and techniques for developing iOS applications in this version updated and expanded to cover iOS 5 and Xcode 4.3.

We’ve reached the end of another week of giveaways. Today InformIT is giving three winners each an eBook of Elemental Design Patterns by Jason McC. Smith. In this book Jason addresses the difficulty that even experienced software professionals face in applying patterns. He helps developers, designers, architects, and analysts bring substantial value to their organizations by teaching to use patterns in a variety of languages, environments, and domains. The book is rich with examples in addition to being a helpful tutorial. He helps developers harness the true power of patterns, map them to real software implementations more cleanly and directly, and achieve far better results.

The Day 9 giveaway will add a nice touch to your bookshelf. We’re giving away sets of “GEEK” bookends from Etsy seller Knob Creek Metal Arts. They are perfect for keeping your software engineering books together!

For Day 3 of Software Engineering Week, we are giving three winners an eBook copy of Disciplined Agile Delivery: A Practitioner’s Guide to Agile Software Delivery in the Enterprise by Scott W. Ambler and Mark Lines. Mark (@Mark_Lines) concentrates on speeding execution and increasing quality in IT organizations by using agile and lean techniques in his career. Scott (@scottwambler) works as a software process improvement consultant. Together they teach the reader to supplement Scrum with agile and lean strategies for a competitive advantage over traditional approaches to building software. The goal of this book is to be an indispensable resource for every enterprise software leader and practitioner, whether they are seeking to optimize their existing agile/Scrum process or improve the agility of an iterative process.

We have reached the end of the first week of giveaways. Today’s winners will each get an eBook copy of HTML5 Developer’s Cookbook by Chuck Hudson and Tom Leadbetter. Hudson and Leadbetter believe that every developer needs to master HTML5. In this book they give you the recipes you need to make that happen. For developers of every level, “You’ll learn exactly how to deliver state-of-the-art user experiences by integrating HTML5’s new and enhanced elements with CSS3, multimedia, and JavaScript APIs.”

It’s Day 4 of InformIT’s 17 Days of Giveaways. Visit yesterday’s blog for a recap of the first three day’s prizes. Today’s prize is an eBook copy of Programming in CoffeeScript by Mark Bates. Bates begins with the basics, delivers tips and techniques throughout, and finishes off with the practical applications of CoffeeScript. He teaches you how to use the robust toolset to create code, free of the bugs of JavaScript. Comment on this post for your chance to win your own copy.

It is the third day of InformIT’s giveaways. Monday we gave out copies of David Geary’s Core HTML5 Canvas: Graphics, Animation, and Game Development. In this book Geary explores and explains the powerful Canvas feature of HTML5 in a clearly written format. He teaches how to use canvas for text, shapes, and images to physics, collision detection, and mobile applications. See corehtml5canvas.com for code and live demonstrations of Geary’s key techniques.