Puzzled

Many people love to work with jigsaw puzzles. I'm not really one of them, but I happened upon Jigsaw Planet, a well-designed site for making online jigsaw puzzles out of any of your photos. You can then sent the URL of your puzzle by email to anyone. The graphics are clever and the entire system is easy to use. Check out this puzzle of my mother-in-law's beautifully weathered piano keys, for instance. Note: This post earlier linked to a site called "Jigcool." I took down the links to JigCool after seeing Mindy's comment. I went back and visited the site and I was shocked at the explicitly pornographic ads that accompanied what seemed to be a site meant for kids. These are not the types of ads I saw last night when I tried out the site. This is truly bizarre. I've replaced the link in this post to a different puzzle site that does not have any advertisements.

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Think Like a Headhunter, Maximize Your Odds & Stand Out.

I am a recruiter, or if you prefer, a headhunter. As I joke on my Linkedin profile, I don't get too wrapped up in titles. I find and deliver specific talent to companies. In essence, I sell people to other people to pay my mortgage. While I make an important distinction between finding people jobs and finding talent for companies (disclosure: the companies pay my fees), I think a recruiter's unique perspective can inform and assist folks looking for new opportunities. When people ask me what I do for work, I joke that I gamble for a living, but it is closer to the truth to say I constantly search for ways to maximize the odds of my own success, and so should every job seeker. Searches I take on are often contingency searches, which means I only get paid when I present the winning candidate and the company successfully hires them,so I am careful where I spend my time. This is one of the first things I want to share with folks looking for a job: The person you contact matters, the way you make contact matters, and your presentation matters. Lots of layoffs are taking place, and the first reaction is often panic, fear, and gloom. One might feel like wallpapering every available surface with a resume and cover letter, but honestly that isn't going to help.

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