Recruiting specialist lured by Spokane area

Jeff Hatcher recruits specialists for companies conducting drug trials. What he really would like to do is recruit those companies to Spokane.

Hatcher owns Landmark Search Group, which he founded in San Diego seven years ago. That city is a hotbed of biotechnology research, but Hatcher says doctorate-level scientists are increasingly reluctant to accept jobs there because the typical $80,000 to $90,000 annual salaries for those positions do not allow them to purchase a home.

“You put those same people up here, and it’s a living,” says Hatcher, who can attest to the advantages firsthand.

The Tri-Cities native – he graduated from high school there in 1982 – became interested in the Spokane area as a real estate play. During a visit to look at investment properties, Hatcher and his Realtor stopped at a home she wanted to preview. She obviously thought the asking price was too high. He was surprised it was so low, and he bought the home. Although he intended to use it only as a summer home, he found himself lingering through the winter.

“I’ve always really thought Spokane was a great place,” Hatcher says.

In July 2003, he uprooted Landmark, which consisted of himself and two employees, neither of whom was in San Diego. Landmark now has a staff of five, four of them in Spokane. All work out of their homes.

Hatcher says Landmark’s recruitment efforts are twofold. One, Landmark helps drug companies find sales representatives. Two, it identifies the statisticians, project managers, regulatory affairs experts and other people needed to conduct the series of rigorous tests that, over several years, gradually establish the safety and effectiveness of new drugs.

Landmark has a deep bench.

Hatcher says the company has a database with 40,000 names. If he cannot come up with a match for a particular position, Landmark will post the opening on a Web site shared with other placement companies.

Landmark helps negotiate pay, stock options and other details of the compensation package. Hatcher says lofty titles often are a big inducement. Landmark gets a fee, typically 25 percent, tied to base compensation.

“It’s a phenomenal business,” Hatcher says. “People have to have the talent, and they have to have it when they have to have it.”

And because business cycles do not interrupt ongoing drug trials, positions cannot stay dark for long.

“If there is such a thing as a recession-proof business, this is it,” says Hatcher, who started Landmark after several years of working for other companies. He worked first placing doctors, then saw the opportunity in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

Hatcher says he established himself by camping out in the reception area of one company and constantly asking what openings it was looking to fill. He ended up billing the company $169,000 for just three months’ work.

Hatcher says he learned to hustle in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he made corporal in 18 months while serving in Okinawa, Japan, and Beirut, Lebanon, among other places. He also learned accounting, which led to a bookkeeping job after he left the Marines in 1985. A friend got him into recruiting.

Two years ago, a grumpy trucker got him into trucking.

After a plane ride listening to a seatmate grouse about how unfair the industry is to its drivers, Hatcher bought him a truck. When he found that broker fees consumed what little profit margin the business affords, his solution was to get a freight broker’s license and hire his own dispatchers. Landmark Trucking and Logistics now has seven drivers and 20 others willing to take freight his own trucks cannot haul.

Hatcher says a brother handles day-to-day management of the business.

Meanwhile, Hatcher also moonlights as a model and bit actor. You may have seen him in advertisements for Silverwood Theme Park or Sterling Savings. “I’m just that over-40 type,” he says, adding that he enjoys the shoots because they get him out of the office.

But recruitment and trucking pay the bills.

“The amount of information you have to know in both businesses is amazing,” Hatcher says. “That’s the challenge I enjoy.”