About Tricia Tamkin

Tricia Tamkin grew up in the Chicago suburbs, the only girl in the boys’ baseball league, and spent her teenage years fitting in gymnastics, cheerleading, and a starring role in Grease between innings.

At 19, she interviewed for a job she’d never heard of – Headhunter. The next morning, she called the agency owner and told him she was going to be a recruiter, either for him or someone else. He hired her. She was the top producer in the firm before she was old enough to order a drink.

When a boss told her to play nicer in the sandbox, she opened her own executive search firm instead. She ran it for nearly two decades, survived more than most people face in a lifetime, and eventually pivoted into training when a client asked her to build a recruiting team rather than fill one.

For the past sixteen years, Tricia has been a recognized leader in both the recruiting industry and the emerging application of AI to recruiting work. She’s the co-founder of Moore eSSentials and creator of The Complete Library and has accumulated over 175 testimonials on LinkedIn from practitioners at every level of the industry. She still makes cold calls and answers her own phone.

Go ahead and call her at 630.240.4454. She’ll pick up. Just make sure it’s because you want to invest in yourself. She’s been in recruiting long enough to know within thirty seconds if you do.

Timeline

2026

Retirement. Balance. Joy. Peace.

2025

Began reclaiming personal identity and meaning through therapy

2024

MARS program launch. The most complete recruiter support program ever.

2023

Co-launches first ever ChatGPT program for the recruiting industry.

2022

After more than a year of having a waitlist for Private Coaching, co-launched Group Coaching program for the recruiting industry.

2021

Major overhaul of both sourcing and sales programs, and development of over 100 hours of new recruiting training.

2020

Heads down in Church of Executive Search Private Coaching Practice. Help dozens of recruiters generate millions of dollars.

2019

Presented Keynotes and Breakout Sessions at 14 conferences in one year.

2018

Co-Founded Church of Executive Search, while simultaneously training and recruiting.

2017

Attended Tony Robbin’s Business Mastery- overloaded with ideas.

2016

Expanded Moore eSSentials staff and focused on building training and speaking business.

2015

Launched Client Cornucopia. Married again, third time’s a charm.

2014

Taught Pinnacle Society for the first time (top 80 headhunters in North America) to rave reviews.

2013

Co-launched first ever Facebook sourcing class, 18 days after Facebook launched Graph Search.

2012

First time speaking at ASA, traveled around North America and Canada training recruiters.

2011

Taught first Sourcing Class and first Private Training for an executive search firm.

2010

Retained to recruit, hire, train and build external recruiting department for client.

2009

Second Husband dies, better knock this off. Let everyone go and moved recruiting desk home.

2008

Build Wolftec to 10 recruiters and 3 support staff.

2007

Launch FastGround, a web-based real estate collaboration platform.

2006

Win award from Cognizant Technology Solutions for executive search excellence.

2005

Son is born, husband is diagnosed with terminal blood cancer.

2004

Closed Lockwood Ross (it was profitable, but not fun!) Returned to sole focus in recruiting.

2003

Generate 1M from one client for first time (Accenture).

2002

Launch Lockwood Ross, an outplacement firm. Married second husband.

2001

Closed $150K engaged deal (50/50/50), biggest to date.

2000

Tech bubble bursts, closed Padigent, bought Disney property.

1999

First husband dies, started traveling extensively and launched Padigent, and HR company for startup firms.

1998

Only accepted 100K jobs. Blanked for 5 months. Closed 11 deals in 10 weeks. Took 3 months off.

1997

Started Wolftec, an executive search firm still running today, took first class in Boolean.

1996

Top internal recruiter with 72 starts, 94% of which were unassisted with over 19% executives.

1995

Accepted internal recruiting position at Whitman Hart.

1994

Top producing recruiter in 15-person agency, billing 272K in first twelve months.

1993

Left college after 2 years to become a commission only agency recruiter in IT.

1991

Graduated from St. Francis High School, and began college at Eastern Illinois University.

1985

Won essay contest to be the Attorney General of Bloomingdale for a day.

1978

Played the Grand Prize Game on Bozo’s Circus and missed the first bucket.

1973

Born September 17th, an only child.

Enthusiastic Love from Tricia's Clients

Mike Molnar

Global Recruiters of Washington Township

Tricia is an excellent instructor/coach who has the unique ability to share her expert knowledge and creative ideas with everyone in a fun manner. She is patient and personable. She also demonstrates a deep interest that her clients learn. I look forward to taking additional courses with Tricia.

Mike Vineyard, CPC

President, Qualitec Consulting Group, LP

Tricia provided very useful information to my organization utilizing techniques that produced results like none other. She is a valued asset to have on your team.

Kevin Smith

Director of Operations at The Smith Consulting Group, LLC

Tricia provided me with enhanced search skills I put to immediate use, all in a fun and easy to understand format.

Harvey Pacht

Harvey Pacht, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist

Tricia is an excellent teacher. Not only does she get the technical info over but gets over the idea of how to be creative with it. She has mastery over the material and is able to get down to a beginners level. She cares about her students and the caring continues on an ongoing basis. Constant offer for support. Great program.

Steve Schulman CPA, MSS

Professional Recruiter at Executive Manager Placement University of Memphis

First of all the course on eSourcing taught by Tricia and Jason is outstanding and took my present skills in using search strings and the internet up 20 times. The recall material is outstanding and everything taught in the class is captured for future use. In addition it is an outstanding value and will have an exponential effect in time on my billings. Support even after the class is outstanding and evergreen. A foundation is in place to get help and continue to improve my skill to an even higher level. They never stop wanting to help past and current students. If your a recruiter you would be a fool not to take this as well as other training classes they offer!

Heather Gray, CPA

Senior Partner, Search Services

I hired Tricia initially for my team, then took her e-sourcing class myself recently. As an 18 year recruiting veteran, I was sure I knew it all. I was wrong! I am a self described computer dinosaur, and even I was able to understand and follow the techniques and tips she and Jason taught us. I was amazed at how revolutionary some of them were, and how much more productive my team and I will be, due to this training. They are an amazing team, and I look forward to sending the rest of my office to their training.

Andy Wrubel

Senior Recruiter at Atlantic Health System

I took an eSourcing class with Tricia. She was very knowledgeable and a great trainer. I also enjoyed her enthusiastic and jovial personality. I am using what she taught now on a daily basis.

Eric Kean

Principal at The Lee Group

Tricia did a wonderful job of presenting all of the information covered in the eSSentails course. She made it fun, informative, and valuable. Great course, great information, great instructor!

Brandon Stone , M.S.

Chief Executive Officer at Erketu

Very personable with in depth knowledge and the ability to teach others of all backgrounds.

Andrew Alexander

Commercial Construction Recruiter

I’ve spent 9 years doing my own sourcing – tried several different methods from overseas services with the “list will be ready for you in the morning” motto to monthly software tools where “its easy, type in company name and you’ll get everything plus we are always updating records.” The results were a huge amount of names and most not in my space and I’d have to scrub the lists clean. I officially went from headhunter to admin. The second attempt to remedy the mass volume issue was to spend a significant amount of time on the front end managing the input to increase accuracy. That was a little better but not enough … finally – frustrated I went back to tried and true. Me, my mouth, a phone and Google. As recently as last year I had given up and just formulated the excuse that my niche was “special” and “too small” for these tools therefore not for me. Then we attended a couple of wait,-don’t-hang-up – if-you-call-right-now -you- wil-l also- receive type ” teaser ” seminars with Tricia and her team. Right out of the gate the accuracy was spot on – coupled with the small time commitment on the front end. I had new names and was on the phone quickly. As my office grew – I comitted and signed up for eesentials. I now had a couple of ancillary verticals that needed “good stock” quickly. I literally skipped in my office after a specific esourcing lesson which landed me a bunch of names I did not know existed. Its been Christmas in May this year. Lots of lists, attendees, association books and finding new competitors to my clients. For kicks I took a search out of my vertical from a colleague in my office and within 5 minutes and adjustments to my eyes from all the “;” “no space” “minus this and that” I had 15 names his ballpark … After this class is almost like I can start a side business entertaining recruiters at parties taking a few key words from their job orders and quickly turning up a list … like Tarot card reading or face painting for headhunters.