The Right Staff

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.

At this point, you won't even know what Lander does, or what the job entails. Some people hang up, compose an answer, and call back. Others just go for it. "I boiled down my life from kindergarten to the time of that phone call in a two-minute synopsis," says Duval, who needed a job after building latrines in Angola and attending graduate school.

If you're an experienced recruiter, no matter how good, that's a strike against you. Too predictable. Too much to unlearn. (Westberg appears to be the exception. But remember, there are no rules.) On the other hand, if you've done something unusual, passionate, or intense, Tuck will pick up on that right away. He calls back people who sound, as he puts it, "a bit spunky." If the person still holds his interest after a brief phone conversation, he might suggest he or she drop everything and come over. "I told him, 'I'm sitting here in cutoffs, combat boots, a T-shirt, and an old hat,' and he said, 'Sounds like you're dressed for an interview for my office,'" says Duval. "And I was like, 'Oh God, unbelievable.'"

Because of his goal in the interview--to find out how well you know yourself--Tuck never tells you what job you're applying for. "The main part of the conversation was about my interests, teasing out my outlook on life," Duval says. "I remember one question he asked me was 'How much of a chameleon are you?'" Not surprisingly, Tuck prefers asking questions to which there are no right answers.

Still, he's very straightforward about who's in control of the situation. When recruiter Todd Weinman showed up at Tuck's house for his first interview, he was surprised to find himself beside another candidate interviewing for the same job. At one point, Tuck asked each one what he or she thought about the other. "You can trash the other person or take the high road, but if you take the high road, you don't want to make them look too good," Weinman reasons. "So I said I thought she was good." He got the job. Two days after he was hired, Weinman was left in charge of the office when Tuck flew off for a three-week vacation. Weinman knew he didn't want to be an office manager permanently, so Tuck gave him another task while he was away: "Think about what you want to do when I return." Weinman decided to start training to become a recruiter. He reacted, in other words, exactly as Tuck had expected.

Just as Tuck doesn't want the responsibility of figuring out how to make anyone else happy, he's not likely to preach to employees about balancing their work with their other interests. By his own example, he makes it clear that while others may concern themselves with balancing their work and personal lives, his goal is to integrate work and home as seamlessly as possible. His home features his collection of 18,000 movies, which he can watch on a large-screen TV or on one of 13 smaller sets. And there's a kitchen closet filled with soda-fountain syrup, 43 flavors in all. But 5 of his 9 phone lines (he has 19 phones) are reserved for business. (The lines are also used by Tim Sauer, Lander's cofounder, who shares Tuck's home, and by another friend and housemate.) And he's even negotiated recruiting deals from pay phones at amusement parks. Business and pleasure, friends and colleagues, all seem to blur into a unified whole--for Tuck, anyway.

Others at Lander seem to have to work harder at blending the two. Weinman, whose personal passion is playing trombone with classical-music groups, admits that he hasn't yet found the right mix in both pursuits. But that doesn't mean that he, or anyone else, is ungrateful for having the choice. Navigating alternatives is what Lander is all about. "Everyone's always in flux around here," office manager Winters says. "Everyone's always redefining jobs."

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