I’m Todd Hicks, a career empowerment

author. My aim is to help you find a job fast

and make the most of your time in the

workforce. Here are 9 great keys to discover

about author Todd Hicks:

 

My Most Important Literature

I have written self-help books on:

• touch typing

• job hunting

• tennis

• cooking

• travel

• study tips

 

How did you become a career

empowerment author?

I had to spend a lot of time doing things

for the topics listed above and make

major blunders to obtain the knowledge

needed to write these how-to manuals.

Please allow me to elaborate.

 

Entering The University of Missouri

at St. Louis in August 1992 as a student

who didn’t know how to study as well as

I previously thought was a wake-up call.

From the time of my college debut until

the winter semester of 1996, I earned a

few F’s and a lot of D’s.

 

I finally became familiar with the art of

repetition and developed other good

study habits on my own; consequently,

I went from having a grade point

average of about 1.5 to graduating with

a Bachelor of Arts degree in

communications from UMSL with a

2.279 GPA in May 2000.

 

How did you learn to cook?

When I first began preparing dinner on

Fridays while still living at home in

November 2008, I learned to make

certain dishes such as Sloppy Joe’s from

my parents or my brother. I have learned

to fix other meals through trial and error

over the years.

 

One key thing I have learned about food

preparation is to have keen time

coordination; if I’m fixing BBQ spare ribs,

beans and cornbread for the meal, I’m

likely to start cutting up collard greens

and red cabbage then adding these items

to my cornbread mixture while I’m baking

the ribs at 400 degrees on the front side

for about 20 minutes. After that time

elapses, I’ll flip the ribs over then bake

that along with the cornbread for about 20

minutes, and during this time I’ll cook

canned beans which I’ll add chopped

eggplant and red beet to.

 

Another key thing I learned is to wait until

I reach the final step of my dish

preparation such as chopping up a beet

before turning on the oven. Running the

oven longer than necessary will make your

gas bill higher besides putting extra wear

and tear on your stove/oven range.

 

My latest cooking tip: Before adding an

egg yolk to a cornbread or cake mixture,

crack the egg over a separate bowl to

ensure you don’t mess up your entire

dish in the event your egg is bad.

 

Why did you decide to master touch

typing?

It’s a necessary skill to have if you want

to type documents, letters and other

correspondences quickly; but more

importantly, I needed to go from coming

out of college as a hunt-and-peck typist

to being someone who could type at least

35 words per minute to increase my odds

of finding a job or temp assignment that

required good typing skills.

 

Years of practice gave me the typing and

10-key skills I needed to land a data entry

assignment with Iron Mountain in 2005.

One of the most important things I

learned about keyboard typing is to keep

my hands positioned where I can easily

reach the Q, A, Z, W, S, O, P, L and caps

lock keys with my end fingers at all times;

a helpful thing I learned about using

the 10-key pad exclusively is to have the

first three fingers on both my hands

hovering over this pad when taking 10-key

tests.

 

Screenshots of my most recent 10-key and

typing tests at the Learn 2 Type website are

below.

Your accuracy was impressive. Your

speed was 9641 Keystrokes Per Hour.

 

Your accuracy was impressive. Your speed

was 46 WPM

 

What qualified you to write a job hunting

and career advice guide?

Reading a lot of materials on these subjects

and making many blunders in my job search

as well as on the job prepared me for this.

The biggest mistake that haunted me from

the early 2000s until I finally began working

full time for good in May  2019 as a

long-term warehousing industry temp

through Randstad was arriving at a teacher

assistant job interview, thinking I didn’t

need to do research on a school district

ahead of time.

 

I felt so foolish as I sat in my chair, unable

to answer their question on what I knew

about them. Over the following 15 years or

so, I was only able to find work as a

substitute teacher or a temp sporadically.

 

What made you a good tennis player?

Receiving instruction on the proper

mechanics and playing this sport regularly

since 1991 took me from hitting too many

balls weakly or out of bounds to consistently

hitting the ball well. Until a veteran player

taught me to raise my racket head over my

right shoulder then lower it toward the

ground then bring it to my left shoulder to

properly make ball contact in the late 1990s,

I couldn’t hit well enough to get many other

people to play with me.

 

What made you qualified to write a travel

tips guide?

I have taken a lot of trips over the last 15

years, and I have messed up on some of

them. I based this book on what I learned

to do and what not to do in order to make

my trip planning and execution flawless.

The biggest traveling blunder I ever made

was not getting back on the Greyhound bus

which was heading to my final destination

(Cleveland, Ohio) when I was on layover at

the Indianapolis station one day in 2014.

 

Because the driver said our layover was to be

45 minutes long, I paid no attention to the

boarding call which was announced about 30

minutes after I exited the bus; consequently,

I had to wait six hours for the next bus, and

thus arrive in Cleveland too late at night.

This mistake cost me a grand opportunity to

see my cousin before she was set to end her

visit to my aunt’s house.

 

My latest travel tip: Bus drivers sometimes

get distracted. If the operator starts to pass

you up at a bus stop or starts to pass up the

stop you indicated you want to exit the bus

at, shout “Hey!”

 

Why have you written these books?

I take pride in having written them to help

you improve your life, but there is more I

have to offer as a promising writer. Based

on my creativity and vivid imagination, I

have written many fiction books and they

keep coming as though they were on a

moving conveyor belt. I began creating

these works in January 2012, with the

goal of entertaining you greater than my

desire to earn money.

 

What separates me from many other authors

is I make reading my books pleasant to the

eye with double-spaced paragraphs and I

never put profanity or any other vulgar

language in my books – please keep this in

mind if you want to give a lesser-known

author like myself a chance. I avoid buying

or reading so many books I find online or

in person because they contain vulgar

language or are written in a single-spaced

paragraph format.

 

That’s it in a nutshell for 9 great keys to

discover about author Todd Hicks. To

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9 Great Keys to Discover About Author Todd Hicks