AEC hires off lagging data. We end it.
The signal this memo tracks runs along a corridor. When a multi-billion-dollar capital build lands in a regional labor market, public wage data lags it by more than a year — and senior engineering candidates start receiving offers priced against the build's tolerance for delay, not against the firms they currently work for. By the time the public-wage prints catch up, the comp bands they re-anchor have already moved.
If your comp model was set in 2023, that lag is the gap we exist to close.
Signed
— Cody Ballah
Managing Principal, Nexorra Group
Filed from
St. Louis · The Mississippi corridor
An aside
Not every open seat is a hire. Some are conversations with the people already on your bench — before a competitor has them first.
02 · The cost of an open or about-to-open seat
An open seat costs you. An about-to-leave seat costs you twice.
AEC firms are billable-hour businesses. An unfilled licensed seat is not a hiring delay — it is revenue you have already lost. The seats you are about to lose, but haven't yet, carry the same burn priced in advance. Run the number for the one you can see.
03 · What we do
Three questions an AEC principal actually wrestles with: comp, offer, retention.
Every engagement starts with what the market actually looks like — what your competitors are paying, who is leaving them, and what candidates in your discipline actually value — before any candidate name is named, and before we ask you whether you want to make a hire at all.
Compensation Band Correction
You leave knowing what you should be paying — and why.
A current comp model, a competitive read on the firms hiring against you, and a hiring framework you can use — whether or not the engagement ever surfaces a hire.
Read more →Offer-Gap Read
You leave knowing why your last three candidates said no.
What your candidates in this discipline + market are telling us they value in 2026 — and where the gap is to what you're offering.
Read more →Retention Diagnostic
You leave knowing which of your senior team is about to get the call.
Structured interviews with your senior team. A prioritized retention read: who is at risk, why, what the realistic competitor list looks like, and what a defensible counter would have to include.
Read more →What we sell is the read. Most engagements end there. When the read surfaces a specific seat and you want us to fill it, we'll run the search with you — terms defined before the work starts.