02 · Services
Three diagnostics: comp, offer, retention.
The typical answer to an AEC hiring question is a sales office with a phone and a LinkedIn license. Ours is different. We are researchers first, consultants second. 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 right now — before any candidate name is named, and before we ask you whether you want to make a hire at all.
01 · Compensation Band Correction
Most AEC comp models lag the offers being made in private. We close the gap in four weeks.
Scope
Four-week engagement · written deliverable + one firm-wide presentation.
You set comp from your last benchmark.
Candidate values shifted generationally; the firms quietly absorbing your talent are not your traditional competitors. Your comp model is one or two refresh cycles behind the offers being made in private.
What does compensation in your discipline and market actually look like right now?
A four-week diagnostic delivers a current comp model, a competitive read on the firms hiring against you, the private-offer signal we hear from candidates in your discipline, and a hiring framework you can use whether or not we run the search.
Commitment Hiring-framework guarantee: if you don't have a framework you didn't have before, we say so on the deliverable.
02 · Offer-Gap Read
Your candidates aren't disagreeing on pay. They're disagreeing on what you're offering beyond it.
Scope
Three-to-four-week diagnostic · written deliverable + one executive briefing.
Situation
You have an offer stack — base, partnership path, tenure-as-loyalty.
Complication
Generational misalignment: boomer-manager values (base, partnership, tenure) are not millennial or Gen Z values (project variety, immediate cash, schedule autonomy). You're offering the right answer to a question your candidates aren't asking.
Question
What are your candidates in this discipline actually valuing in 2026 — and where is the gap to what you're offering?
Our answer
A three-to-four-week diagnostic of your offer against what AEC candidates in your discipline and market are telling us they value. Includes the misalignment dashboard tuned to your discipline.
Commitment The opening question — 'Do you know what your future labor pool is looking for?' — is free. The structured per-discipline read is the engagement.
03 · Retention Diagnostic
Before you spend a year replacing the people you might lose, find out which ones you're actually about to lose.
Scope
Six-to-eight-week diagnostic · six to twelve structured interviews · written report + executive briefing.
Your bench is your firm. You think you have a hiring problem.
Many of the seats your firm depends on aren't your next hire — they're your senior people, who get courted in private by firms you may not be tracking. By the time you see the offer letter, the conversation has been alive for months.
Which of your senior people are at highest flight risk right now, what would it cost the firm to lose them, and what would it take to keep them?
A six-to-eight-week diagnostic: six to twelve structured interviews with your senior team, run by us under written confidentiality. We produce a prioritized retention read — who is at risk, why, what the realistic competitor list looks like for each, and what a defensible counter-offer would have to include. The same methodology that runs every candidate call we make, pointed at your incumbents.
Commitment And when the diagnosis reveals the right move is a partnership, an acquisition, or a different structural answer, we say so — and we broker the conversation if you want it.
Start with the diagnostic. Decide the rest later.
We hold one diagnostic engagement per industry sub-segment per quarter so that the read we deliver to one client is not the same read we're delivering to their competitor.