The talent market for civil/environmental engineers is at an all-time competitive high. Consulting firms, public agencies and municipalities are struggling to find candidates. Recruiters and talent acquisition leaders are crafting value proposition presentations to encourage potential candidates to consider even informal conversations. In response, employers are resorting to strong financial counter offers and, in some cases,…
TOP Trends in the Civil Engineering & Architecture Recruiting Marketplace for 2020/2021
Since 2017, much of America has experienced a fairly consistent sense of turmoil. In spite of this, firms in the A/E marketplace view the remainder of 2020 with a guarded sense of optimism. This encouragement is largely due to the anticipation that a federal infrastructure bill will be passed, funding for clean energy projects and…
Analysis Paralysis & Job Offer Decisions
Have you ever been in a situation where you have analyzed a job offer and still can’t decide whether to accept? You postpone your decision by telling everyone (mostly yourself) that you need to do more analysis. This inability to decide is ultimately a negative decision. If you are choosing to accept an offer or…
What is the ASCE Grand Challenge?
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has initiated a “Grand Challenge.” The Grand Challenge asks for a commitment from civil engineers to be innovative in all phases of project planning, design, and implementation. The Grand Challenge’s goal is to reduce infrastructure lifespan costs by 50% by 2025 and to encourage innovation and design for infrastructure sustainability. The ASCE…
A/E Leaders Make Changes: Staff Should Take Note!
When I began recruiting within the A/E industry in 1986, consulting firms purported the ability for staff to choose between a technical track or a management track. In reality, if you were a competent engineer and personable, then you would be pushed up the management track (whether you wanted to or not). If you weren’t…
Does Company Size Matter?
The 2016 job market is in full swing and with it, if you are lucky, comes choices. Seasoned professionals as well as graduate engineers find themselves approached with opportunities. Today’s civil engineering companies are as different as their employees. In your job exploration you need to define the type of employer you will best fit. The…
Has Your A/E Firm Taken Over Your Identity?
Are you known as a civil engineer, architect, landscape architect and planner OR are you known as an employee of your employer? Recently an outstanding executive engineer was set to interview with my client. This engineer had worked as a leader in his firm for 20 years. At the start of the process, he told…
It’s Not About The Title or The Money: Stop Lying To Yourself!
If I had a penny for every time a job seeker told me that they would not reject a job offer based upon the title or the money, I could have bought an island years ago! Stop lying to yourself. Inevitably, 95% of job offer rejections center around money or title. That is acceptable and sometimes even reasonable. However,…
It’s All About Relationships.
Relationship: the state of being connected Engineering projects, project teams, department teams, clients, civil engineering recruiters all have one similar characteristic – RELATIONSHIPS. This includes our relationship with ourselves, our colleagues, our supervisors, our clients, our candidates. We cannot escape this inevitable connection. How we treat others, through our words and more importantly our actions,…
Professional Registrations – More Than Wall Decorations
For nearly 30 years I’ve been connecting employers and job seekers in the civil engineering industry. Sometimes I have someone who is a great fit for a position but the company does not want to interview the person. Why? Because the individual did not have a particular professional registration/license that the company felt would be…