Business and Applicant Formatting

[vipar]

Hello fellow Developers and Indie Companies.

I wanna give the community something, to help out, so that these forums might become more friendly, and more professional, even for your average joe!

Now, I've found myself reading many threads here, and they are often poorly formatted giving off a very non-serious vibe even if it was not intended. A lot of people does not have English as their native language. Just like me. I am from Denmark! Some people here (I am looking at you Fragfest, juguefre and Ironbelly) seems to get ticks whenever they see a badly formatted thread and respond to it. I can understand them, but we need it to stop for both their and the communitys sake

So below I will make some easy to understand descriptions of what you should include to make a proper formatted thread.

Looking for a Job
So you are looking for a job? Obviously you want to tell your future boss how you work, what you expect from payment (That is why we have the three prefixes PAID, NON-PAID and ROYALTY. Please remember to use them!!! Can't stress this enough!) and what kind of person you are. You also want to show some kind of showreel or portfolio, so that people can see what kind of work you've done in the past, so they know what you are capable of. Always, ALWAYS show your very best work.

Tell them your name.
Tell them your craft, and if you studied to get there or if you are self-taught.
Tell them a little about yourself.
Tell them what you expect (if you have any expectations like activity etc).

Show them your website (You can make free blogs on a site like Wordpress.com).
Show them your portfolio or past work.
Show them otherwise interesting things that relates to getting a job.
If they wanna contact you, it's always good a idea to include an email that you actively check. If not, and you are confident that you check the site often enough, then let them PM you here.

Skip the weird jokes.
Rule of thumb: Cut the chase, get right to the case.

Use

• Bullet
• Point
• Lists

To state things about yourself, for example:

My skills include:

• 3D Modelling
• Texturing of Models
• Rigging of Models

Looking for Employee(s)
Looking for an employee or more employees for your team can be tricky, as you want to attract people who knows what they are doing. In order to do this, you need to have a certain appeal. Almost anything in life is about first impressions. The first impressions that people get from you and your company, is usually through your recruitment thread(s).

• How well worded is it written?
• Does your company/group and it's goals seem legitimate and realistic?
• Do you have the required knowledge to begin your project? (unless you already got an ongoing one which is doing well!)

When you make a recruitment thread you wanna include the following. These are essential:

• Name of your Company/Group
• A little about your group/company
• What you aspire to achieve
• Story for your project or at least Concept.

A little note on the story:
Your story is not unique and original just because you think so. There is about 90 % chance that your idea have already been done. So take something you might know, and add a twist, or try and add other elements to make it more original. An example of this, would be something like Sanctum. FPS and RTS in one.

All of these needs to be worded so that person reading is no in doubt at any time what is it you wish to achieve.
The rest are of these are very good to have, and recommended to have, but not necessary to attract people, given the first part is worded right!

• Concept Art
• 3D Art
• In-Game pictures
• Playable Demo or Video of Game in Action

And finally what it is you are actually looking for! The job description(s) should be short and precise. Remember: Cut the Chase, get to the Case.
A job description could look something like this:
Senior Programmer

• Needs to know UnrealScript fluently
• Needs to be able to show past work
• Optional is good knowledge of C/C++

It doesn't have to be a long novel of what you expect. Just enough to let the person apply know, that this is what you need.
And of course, always remember to give an email or website to contact you by!

I hope this has helped just a little bit, towards a more professional forum!

If you like what you just read, then please make sure this thread stays at the top, by bumping it. Perhaps it will be stickied one day?

[vipar]

Added the Company part.

[juguefre]

Hmmmmm.....you know what could be really good in this post? add a part with info on "how not to be contacted by stupid unprepared dumb fellas who want to lead the way" I could really use that kind of info as clearly I was unable to accomplish this by myself.

[vipar]

Nothing can protect you from idiocy
Just be polite, and move on.

[Veshch]

Just a note, the rules dictate that compensation discussion should be done in private.

[vipar]

Yeah, but people who are looking for a paid job have a tendency of posting their price in their thread.
Like price per asset. Or hour salary. Or a minimum they can accept working for.

[reinrag]

Great thread Vipar really great one, i would suggest to write it in your signature so that everytime you post people could click on it i reckon it's a good idea, anyway hopefully next time people would know what to write not like that Captain Nircius guy, the one with the Zombie MMO unique idea

[juguefre]

Great thread Vipar really great one, i would suggest to write it in your signature so that everytime you post people could click on it i reckon it's a good idea, anyway hopefully next time people would know what to write not like that Captain Nircius guy, the one with the Zombie MMO unique idea

The police forum reported the thread from the captain Nircius and is no longer available (damn the police don't like people to have some fun)

[lethal_d0se]

An informative post and a pleasant read. Good work.

[fragfest2012]

Nice, I think you did better than both Ironbelly and me (when I posted something similar to yours a while back).

[lorbid]

Good post. very concise and even provides the reasons behind each topic (very important)
However I think part of iron, fragfest, and others get chaffed about... is the lack of content in the original post of a recruiting thread.

Formatting is one thing, but content is important, especially if it's for a free/royalty gig. Without enough information, it might as well be an ad on Craigslist (and this community is better than that). Personally I think more of us post our GDDs to not only help complete newbies, but to better ourselves.


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[vipar]

I would like to request this to be stickied please!

[fragfest2012]

Seconded for a sticky.

[vipar]

Bumping this up for people to see and hope for a sticky..

[vipar]

Bumping it up again.

[igi]

I prefer to talk pricing privately since the type and aimed platform of the work requested by clients varies a lot as well as the skills of the freelancers around the forums.Some people wants per-model or even per-project pricing and others rely on hourly rates.Declaring a hourly rate publicly does not help one to get an idea of the amount of money needed in order to finalize their project.Every task is too spesific,so it's always better to ask for a quote vie pm .

[vipar]

Putting a minimum wage for things like

• Hourly Work
• Per-Project Work
• Per-Asset Work

shouldn't really be that much of a problem, as this tells the customer that the artist refuse to go lower than that.

[Phen0mM0dz]

Sticky this thread please Also thank you man you have defiantly helped me a boat load with this thread it is now in my favorites on Google chrome. I will be using it for a long time to come!

[igi]

Nah,I may disagree.Only thing you can precisely talk about is your hourly rate,you can't predict your per asset and project pricing until fully informed about them.Minimum rates help to deport some asshole who offers something like 1 to 8 bucks per asset.But still no luck because there's tons of people who are not able to distinguish the meaning between freelance and royalty work.For actual people,again it wouldn't really helpful at all.Hourly pricing also super dependent on the freelancers themself.Works itself gives an idea about the price,if someone can't read this,probably he tends to offer very low prices then it worth.Also I don't want to start a freelancers pricing fight.

[vipar]

Sticky this thread please Also thank you man you have defiantly helped me a boat load with this thread it is now in my favorites on Google chrome. I will be using it for a long time to come!

Good to know! Glad I could help!

Nah,I may disagree.Only thing you can precisely talk about is your hourly rate,you can't predict your per asset and project pricing until fully informed about them.Minimum rates help to deport some asshole who offers something like 1 to 8 bucks per asset.But still no luck because there's tons of people who are not able to distinguish the meaning between freelance and royalty work.For actual people,again it wouldn't really helpful at all.Hourly pricing also super dependent on the freelancers themself.Works itself gives an idea about the price,if someone can't read this,probably he tends to offer very low prices then it worth.Also I don't want to start a freelancers pricing fight.

You know what? Lets just agree to disagree.
I am no artist, but at least that's how I would do it. I respect your opinion and you are in your right to have it

[lorbid]

I agree with igi.

Public pricing (unless desperate) does no one any favors. Plus pricing doesn't take into account the project scope or expediency expected.

I may be able to create 100 original custom sound fx assets for $5 min each. But the project manager may want those in 4 days or less. That kind of requirement may negate the original price as that could be a considered a rush/expedited job. It doesn't help me or the project manager.


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[Veshch]

Personal preference on whether or not pricing should be discussed in a thread is irrelevant. While I personally agree with Igi that it should be done in private, the fact of the matter is the rules say not to. By telling other people they need to have it in their post, you're technically telling them they need to break the rules.

On that same note, there are quite a few people that should give the recruiting forum guidelines a closer read.

Other than that, I do think your thread might help people that might not know what they're doing. So kudos for that.

[vipar]

Fine. I removed the damn line, geez. Lets just move on from that? :P

On that same note, there are quite a few people that should give the recruiting forum guidelines a closer read.

I did, and the format it's written in, is not very easy to understand for people who don't have English as their first language (I don't have a problem, but a lot of people do). This is a lot more non-English friendly.

[Veshch]

I wasn't trying to be hostile if that's how it came across, apologies.

And you weren't who I had in mind for that quoted bit, so no worries there on your part.

[vipar]

I wasn't trying to be hostile if that's how it came across, apologies

You are like the 2nd or 3rd person to mention it :P

[vipar]

poking this thread up.