Martin Warren interviews Sourcing Rockstar Mark Tortorici at #Sourcecon

Martin Warren (@martinwarren), and Mark Tortorici (@marknexus), catch up at #SourceCon in Denver, to talk about how Mark got his start in sourcing (back in the days of AltaVista) and ended up in the sourcing business.

 

MW: Tell the guys back in Australia and New Zealand, a little about your background?

MW: Tell the guys back in Australia and New Zealand, a little about your background? Why are you where you are?

MT: Basically I got into staffing in 1996 – 1997, and actually I started as an IT person, they hired me to fix computers for the recruiters. There was no Google, and only a couple of the computers had the internet connection, others did not. They all sourced out of a database that was really difficult to use, so yeah, that was my job. I would go from contract recruiter, to contract recruiter computer and merge these access databases together.

So that was my job. But, towards the end of that first year, my boss wanted me to help the recruiters find candidates. So, I’d go on AltaVista, I’d go on Lycos (back when it was out there), Excite, and I’d go on there and I’d extract candidates, and I’s say “well here are these candidates” and he was like “well ok, can you get more of this type, or more location based?”, and I’d think about it, and come back and have more solutions. Basically, all these solutions that we were coming up with- he mandates that everyone in the company learn how to do it. So, I taught everyone in the company, and then he had the idea to bring it to other outside recruiters and sources, and so that was the first recruiter sourcer training that was being done around that time. That basically started the same year as AIRS which is now part of ADP.

So that is how I got into the business. Since then I’ve done training, I’ve done contract sourcing and recruiting and training on my own. I’ve done training for larger companies, to train their organisations; like Facebook, like Apple, Disney, Google, eBay, Yahoo. I go in, see what the problems are, look at all their recs, come up with solutions for the recs, and I teach the recruiters and sourcers how to either recruit or source better, or just understand the technology behind the recs better.

MW: Mark that’s a great story, and I think the guys in Australia and New Zealand are going to get so much for coming and seeing you talk and sharing your wisdom. God I remember Alta Vista. Look forward to seeing you in Australia and New Zealand.

 

Mark Tortorici will be one of the keynote speakers at ATC Events’ sourcing conference – Sourcing.Social.Talent #SST2014 in November. This event will bring together sourcing innovators and social media experts. Register now for the event in Sydney, Melbourne or Auckland .