The Right Staff

CEO Richard Tuck doesn't have to try hard to keep his employees happy. He hires people who know how to do that for themselves

Last year, mired in one of the periodic slumps that have characterized his 30-year career, Jon Westberg decided to seek advice from his boss. Westberg, an executive recruiter at Lander International (#290), had just about run out of ideas about how he might reverse his bad streak, which had dragged on for more than two months. And the one obvious explanation wasn't one he was eager to act on. Still, even as he made his way to Richard Tuck's office, he thought he already knew what was standing in the way of his ability to make placements: he was simply spending too much time on his art, sculpting furniture out of salvaged wood and driftwood. He was spending close to 100 hours a week on both pursuits. What he needed to do, he suspected, was to devote himself to hitting the phones aggressively.

Sure enough, it didn't take long for Tuck--cofounder and CEO of Lander, which is based in El Cerrito, Calif.--to raise the subject of Westberg's outside interest. "I suggested that maybe he was spending too much time at work, that he needed to devote more time to his art," Tuck says. Doing so, Tuck reasoned, would help Westberg gain a deeper sense of fulfillment, which would in turn energize him, helping him get back on track to making the commissions that added up to his annual six-figure salary. Tuck's passionate argument was the exact opposite of what most employees in that situation expect to hear. Not that Tuck was motivated to say it just because of its shock value.

Or was he?

As befits a roller-coaster enthusiast, Tuck seems to delight in consistently applying a kind of topsy-turvy logic to managing employees. While most CEOs might tolerate workers who have outside commitments, Tuck actually seeks such people out. Aside from the driftwood artisan, his employees include a former concert bass trombonist, an ichthyologist (someone who studies fish biology), a news photographer, and a Third World latrine builder. Several are refugees from the corporate world, including a former American Express executive who designs golf putting greens on the side. Having found what he's looking for in an employee--bitter experience has taught him that his number one priority should be to hire people he likes to be around--Tuck takes every opportunity to assure that person that he's not remotely interested in keeping anyone chained to a desk. Want to take six weeks' vacation in Asia? Why not take more? Fed up with your job? Let's try a new one, see what happens. Want to work at home? Go ahead. Tuck doesn't just think outside the box. There is no box to begin with. Never will be. He hates rules. "I kept waiting for policies to be firmed up, but he just wouldn't do it," says office manager Helen Winters.

If Lander sounds like some West Coast company too groovy for its own good, consider the real-world results Tuck has achieved: between 1993 and 1997, the company's revenues rose from $231,000 to more than $2.5 million, a growth rate of 994%. Lander specializes in placing information-technology auditors, high-tech workers who are certified to maintain the integrity of computer networks. The Year 2000 bug, while a potential boon to Lander and companies like it, has also brought waves of competitors into the field. "From the standpoint of a recruiter, if Richard is working for a client, you are probably not going to bother to compete against him, because you are going to lose," says Mary Ness, whose Minneapolis-based business, the Ness Group, operates in the same niche as Lander but focuses solely on the Twin Cities area.

Ask Tuck about the company's growth and he'll attribute it to the "fun" people he's managed to hire. But while his hiring methods may border on bizarre, he's not nearly as impulsive as he likes to sound. Of course, he's not about to deploy the same kinds of sophisticated screening techniques that other CEOs use--from team interviewing to psychological testing to take-home projects--but then he's not looking for the same traits that tend to interest many other employers. (For examples, see "Screen Tests," below.) What the 28 employees at Lander share is a quality that Tuck himself takes every opportunity to exude: they know what makes them happy. They don't need Tuck or anyone else to figure out their lives for them.

What Tuck has figured out, though, is how to identify such people. He does it by opening up his life to them right from the start--or at least seeming to. He acts utterly himself, making no secret of his five-week trips to visit roller coasters in faraway lands (he says he's ridden every one in the United States) and rarely missing a chance to throw others off balance. His anything-goes atmosphere loosens people up so that they feel more comfortable just being themselves. "I left there with a mixture of feeling fascinated but also not having the first clue about what this company did," says recruiter Derek Duval, recalling his interview for a job at Lander. "But I knew I had met someone I wanted to know more about."

Then again, there are times when Tuck's approach can be absolutely overwhelming. When recruiter Jason Schulterbrandt was interviewed for a job, the meeting took place in Tuck's "fun house" basement. "I come from New York, and I've seen a lot of things. But when I went downstairs, I was absolutely catatonic," he recalls. "I couldn't speak for 15 minutes." Recruiter Gregg Eiler--who sports hair down to his shoulders, favors shorts and a T-shirt, and parks a mountain bike in his office--puts it this way: "As soon as you see Richard's world, you know anything you come up with is going to be just fine."

Answer a vaguely worded ad for a job at Lander--probably under a heading like "Juggler Extraordinaire"--and you'll get a voice-mail message from Tuck that ends like this: "Go ahead and tell us about yourself now. Let me know your fondest dreams, or your ambitions, or a funny story about yourself, something so that I get a sense of your personality. Based on what you leave on the message, it will determine which people we call in first for interviews. So, at the sound of the tone, go ahead: lights, camera, action, it's your turn now." Beep.