By Emily Wellborn

Talent Acquisition Writer Brad Davis prefers to know and explain how the world works.

His varied interests from creative writing to complex technologies make him a great writer – and a natural trivia savant. Soon, Brad will be sharing his love of knowledge with a new, national audience on Jeopardy!., but when he’s not dominating in erudite game shows, he helps hundreds of people in the next steps of their careers.

At PGS Worldwide, skilled recruiters find talented professionals across a variety of fields. Brad supports these hopeful candidates in achieving their dream jobs by using concise prose to adapt their resumes into impressive displays of their full range of talent. His love of technology and ingenuity makes his candidates undeniably attractive to leaders in the Aerospace/Defense industry.

“I’ve been writing ever since I could string a sentence together,” Brad said on a break from writing a Data Science Engineer resume. “It’s always been a natural desire of mine and important throughout my life.”

This lifelong learner has taken his career in several directions, with the common factor being that he uses his knowledge to connect with the world around him.

As an emerging professional following the 2008 housing market collapse and creative writing opportunities lacking, Brad took a more stable path towards following his dreams, while supporting young minds.

“I got into teaching more or less because I was struggling to find a career in writing,” Brad said. “I went back to school for it. We were still very much in a recession, so jobs were hard to come by.”

After obtaining a Master’s Degree and a teaching certification, Brad started his career as a high school English teacher at Washington High School in Kansas City, Kansas. He taught the classics, like Romeo and Juliet or Of Mice And Men, and loved the unexpected directions his students could take to explore countless themes, worlds, and ideas in the work. He was always impressed by the connections his students could make, and he uses these same skills today.

“There’s a lot of natural crossovers between my education in English, but Education has helped me be a lifelong learner and bring that into this role. I literally learn something new every day about Aerospace jobs. I really like to use my expertise to impart on other people and even support training.”

After 6 years in teaching, Brad was looking for a change. He found a new home at PGS, utilizing his love for taking on new knowledge to write resumes for hundreds of talented candidates. During the last six months, he has written over 700 resumes in total including his favorites: Avionics Technicians, Assemblers, and complex Web Developers.

However, his longtime success in writing has never truly distracted from a lifelong love of trivia. In December, Brad announced the exciting news to the PGS staff that he had been selected to live one of his greatest dreams as a contestant on the legendary game show Jeopardy!, which aired on May 10.

“That’s what you do when you’re good at trivia,” Brad joked. “It’s a huge achievement for me, definitely something I can brag about for the rest of my life.”

After 10 years, four tests, and three rounds of screening, he was selected to travel to Los Angeles and put his knowledge to the test against competitors including Lawyer Hope Silberstein and 4-game champion Hannah Wilson.

“It really was kind of an overwhelming experience,” Brad said. “They told me, after my second audition, that they would keep me in the contestant pool for 18 months and then it was 2 years later when I heard from them. I wasn’t expecting to hear from them at all.”

The experience was surreal and overwhelming. Surrounded by set pieces he’d only seen on a screen (the set is smaller in person, by the way), Brad was amazed at how well-run the production was during while shooting multiple episodes in a day.

“There was a lot going on all at once. I think there’s a lot more prep that goes into it than people realize; a lot more logistics behind the scenes that didn’t make it into the show.”

In this competitive environment, Brad pursued success by utilizing quick reflexes and playing to his strengths, dominating the Classic Movies, Straight to Jail, and Way Back In The 1900s categories.

“There was a category in the game about classic movies, and that’s where I went first since I’m a big movie buff. I really like the arts and entertainment stuff, that’s where I thrive,” Brad said. “One of the producers actually came up to me on a break to tell me I was hitting the button too fast.”

Brad filmed his episode two months before the air date and while he was excited to share how he did on the show, it was hard to imagine himself in the public eye on this scale.

“I’m still not entirely sure what to expect once it airs,” Brad said. “Just seeing the reaction from my announcement on social media was overwhelming, let alone the whole country.”

The PGS staff had been not-so-patiently waited to see how our soon-to-be-famous colleague would do on the show, but the entire team cheered Brad on has he used his unique abilities to quickly connect ideas, and solidly earn his position as runner-up during a challenging Final Jeopardy.

You can stream Brad’s episode on DIRECTV STREAM, Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, Vidgo, and YouTube TV; or you can read a game recap here.