Speaker Bio
Rick Gillis, Author of ‘JOB! Search Optimized’; ‘PROMOTE! Your Work Does Not Speak for Itself. You Do’; and my next book currently in-progress, The Quotient.
I think the first thing you should know about me is that my writing was an accident–I just thought I could–so I did. They say ‘write about what you know’ and I know about employment, job search, advancement & careers–even though I’ve never been in HR or staffing.
This is because I was employee #1, the sales guy that became the ‘face of the company’ with the first job board in the greater Houston, TX area. This was back in the Neolithically-early days of the Internet–1997. The local newspaper, fortuitously for us, deemed that the Internet was nothing more than a passing fad. Due to that single declaration, we, three guys working in the dining room of a townhouse, were tremendously successful simply because we had NO competition for some 18-24 months. The nationals (Monster, CareerBuilder) were coming down the pike but they hadn’t yet made it to Houston while we were growing the company.
As a result, yours truly became the local Internet job, search expert. This led to invitations to speak around the city (Houston is BIG!), and then Texas (Texas is BIG!), and then across the US (The US is BIG!); doing a LOT of media…etc. You might wonder why media was interested in a ‘job search guy’. Well, what was happening at the same time as the Internet hitting its first peaks was the Internet “Bubble” crash of the late 90’s, and just after that, the US (and global) slide into a major recession. Times were tough! People were looking for work and I was able to share best practices–still do, in fact.
My first 3 books, ‘Really Useful Job Search Tactics’ (which received a bit of buzz for my White Out Technique*), ‘The Real Secret to Finding a Job’, and ‘Make Me Money or Save Me Money’ are no longer in print because each was superseded by the next. Only ‘JOB!’ remains in print and, although originally published in 2012 and updated in 2015, it still stands the test of time.
Number five, PROMOTE!, was my first book written for working folks who don’t know how to go about promoting themselves ON the job. BUT, wait there’s more! PROMOTE!, significantly, was the genesis of my next, newest book.
Number six, The Quotient (QTNT), due for publication by Indigo River Publishing in late 2020, is the pinnacle of my career to this point. This book will make a lot of difference in a lot of lives! The first, and perhaps most impactful aspect of The QTNT, is that pay disparity as we know it can finally be resolved. The Quotient is NOT about Equal Pay but rather about the Proper Pay for the Best Performance. This is a game-changer. Nowhere in that statement does it say anything about sex or race or appearance or anything else.
I look forward to dropping back by here when The Quotient drops. Till then, please be well in the age of coronavirus!
*The ‘white out technique’ refers to the copying and pasting of an entire job posting at the bottom of a resume; reducing the font size to 1PT, and then choosing ‘white’ from the color palette to make the copy on the printed page ‘disappear’ (It’s actually transparent). Use this tactic today and there is good chance your resume may be tagged by the software as deceitful and dismissed from consideration. Rick’s current resume format utilizes a visible keyword category at the bottom of the first page of your resume that serves the same keywords-flagging purpose. This better and acceptable technique can be found in the JOB! book.
