How to apply to first job?

Felix,

If you have three years of design and development experience under your belt, you should have no difficulty finding a job. Make sure you update your resume to include your skill level in the various languages, platforms, libraries, and software that you work with, and put together a portfolio site where you can showcase some of your freelance work to highlight your skills and make them tangible. Once you have those pieces put together, hop onto job boards, Craigslist, etc. and start sending out your resume. Include a link to your portfolio site on your resume, as well as in your email, and then comes the worst part - the waiting! I was able to land a job with no prior experience (immensely lucky) just because I was able to prove that I knew what I was talking about and could handle the position I was applying for, so again, with three years under your belt and (in theory) a slew of sites/applications/projects that you can show off as evidence of that experience, you should certainly be qualified to find some work without too much of a hassle. Obviously, keep learning new things while you're applying (well, ALWAYS be learning new things, really, but I'm sure you know that as you've been working in the industry for as long as you have), and be confident in your abilities and study up and be ready to showcase basic through advanced features, potentially on a white board or in a plain text editor, depending on who you interview with/what you interview for. If you interview for a small enough production house, you may not even be required to take any code challenges during the interview, but most medium to larger sized companies implement those. JavaScript and/or PHP would be great languages to learn, and probably will be sought after skills by most companies.

Happy hunting!

Erik