Hey, hey, hey, come on—I'm not a hairy freak! That's how Alexis Trépanier welcomes you to his website. It's a tongue-in-cheek reference to what you might think when you see the young multimedia wizard—wild hair, scruffy beard and all.
Alexis Trépanier created the Pixel Pharmacy site when he was job hunting in 2002 to give recruiters a light-hearted demonstration of his multimedia skills. The flash animation, which showcases him, his hair and beard, has recorded more than two million unique visitors!
Not your everyday candidate
When Alexis Trépanier put his portfolio online, incorporating animations created with the latest Flash version, he became a forerunner. "Putting my CV and portfolio on line coincided with the first version of Flash that allowed video. In those days, there was little video on the Web and the company that owned Flash indexed all creations made using their software."
Thanks to this excellent plug, the site quickly became an Internet darling, attracting the attention of Macromedia, which rewarded him for his work by voting it the Macromedia Site of the Day
Everything took off very quickly after that, with his site going from becoming virtually unknown to the hottest thing going. "The first year it was online, it registered more than two million unique visitors, and I was constantly getting job offers and being asked for advice!"
The other side of the coin
Alexis was overwhelmed by this mountain of offers. . . In front of a computer, this Internet whiz is in his element, but ask him to manage his career, and it's a whole other ball game.
To sort through the many dozens of job offers he got, Alexis would have needed a secretary to go through the pile and an advisor to guide him. But at 24 years of age, the young programmer/graphic designer did not have the means to pay for such services, and despite his fabulous virtual success, he did not succeed in getting the job of his dreams.
For four years, letting instinct inform his choices, he worked in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Burundi until the day when, having had enough of the ups and downs of freelancing, he decided to trade it all in for the stability of a salaried job
His reputation precedes him
In 2006, for the first time in his life, Alexis Trépagnier consulted the job ads on a recruiting site and sent his CV to two companies. One of them was very interested in his application, and rightly so. . . chance had it that the two directors of this online software company had been among the two million people who visited his site four years before!
In fall 2006, Alexis therefore joined this young company as a programmer, and says he is delighted with his decision. Despite his circuitous path, he considers his experience as positive: creating the site put him in the forefront of video integration, giving him a leg up on most of his programmer colleagues. The three months it took to put together Pixelpharmacy.com/2002 finally paid off—it just took a while.
Not so bad for a "hairy freak"!