Recruiters at Lander insist that they'll walk away from a deal if it doesn't seem right. "I wouldn't place anyone in a company I wouldn't want to work for," Peters says. The recruiters, many of whom are in their twenties and thirties, often make more than $100,000 a year after a couple of years and can take in as much as $175,000.
There are also gratifying moments, like the time last year when Peters got Frank Cordima a job after nearly a yearlong search. Cordima, 47, had worked as an information-systems auditor for the state of Massachusetts for 24 years and carried the stigma of a 9-to-5 government worker despite the fact that he had continually upgraded his skills. With two young kids, he was making $36,000 a year and knew he was underpaid. Peters coached him through interviews, channeled him to several prospects, and then landed him an offer at Staples Inc. in Framingham, Mass. His package included a 66% raise, a year-end bonus, and stock options. "When she told me I got the job, my wife ended up crying," Cordima says. "I feel like I'm in a good situation, with my pride and integrity back to where it should be."
Tuck himself knows what it's like to work for a boss you don't like, in a company that feels stifling. He felt the same way not so many years ago--except that he owned the company. Founded in 1979, Paramount Personnel was the first incarnation of Lander; he changed the company's name in order to hire a woman who didn't want to work in a "placement" firm. (Her mother's maiden name was Lander.) To grow the business, he hired the kind of employees it made sense to hire at the time: experienced recruiters. Even so, the company barely squeaked through the recession of the early 1980s. "My accountant told me I should close down. But I thought Mickey [Rooney] and Judy [Garland] wouldn't have done that. So we hung on," Tuck says.
The company survived, but Tuck grew increasingly despondent over the business. "I was getting burned out, working with experienced recruiters who were like salespeople," he says. "This was like a business. I wasn't having fun." So in 1985 he hired a manager and took off to Europe for four weeks. Upon his return, he started working out of the house and was soon billing more than everyone else combined. So he let the manager go, and the staff gradually trickled away. With just two support people left, Tuck moved the company to El Cerrito, down the hill from his home.
But by 1993 Tuck still wasn't happy--and his personal obligations were mounting. In April, overwhelmed by debt, he found himself filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy--an act he regrets and even now has difficulty explaining. "I was really shaken up," he says. He became depressed and went into therapy. During those sessions he finally realized what made him happy--not only in his work but also in what he wanted out of life. One morning, looking out his living-room window, he saw the entire bay and lowlands covered in clouds. But in his inner world, the clouds parted. "All of a sudden, everything became clear," he says. "Who I was, what I had to do, why I was here."
Knowing himself that much better, he resolved to build a company in which the culture made sense to him. Then he began to fill it with like-minded people.
After my last day of interviews, Tuck invited me up to the house for dinner. Sauer prepared an Asian stir-fry. Once dinner was out of the way, Tuck offered me a tour of the house. Finally. Wait till you see it, everyone had said, referring to the "fun house." Hundreds of visitors take the tour every year.
We entered a room devoted to Hollywood, lined with a wall of film books and filled with movie posters. A second room was dedicated to Broadway plays. Then we headed to the basement, which is crowded with pictures and objects. An entire wall was lined with painted-plaster characters from Charles Dickens novels, and a bathroom was plastered wall to wall with postcards of roller coasters, including a small mechanical replica on a counter. Beyond, there was a room with four pinball machines fixed so that the player usually wins. We continued touring the basement, but there was so much covering the walls and ceilings, I couldn't take it all in. There was the screening room and, behind that, a stage for presenting magic shows. In a small, darkened anteroom, two large chairs faced a three-level display--a faithful replica of a Victorian English village, painstakingly created with miniature houses, each one lit from the inside.
In a far wing of the house, we entered a bedroom, which was also overflowing with objects. A miniature Christmas display contained several trees and fiber-optic strands that resembled fireworks when they lit up. Beyond a sliding glass door was a wooden deck, overlooking a garden below, with San Francisco in the distance. On the other side of the bedroom was another picture window looking into darkness. With the faint sound of a foghorn in the background, the window slowly brightened to reveal an entire New England village, with miniature lobster boats, docks, houses, shops, a church, and a market.
