When AEC firms can’t find the leader they want, the problem may be unrealistic expectations rather than a broken talent market.
AEC firms often say they are struggling to find talent. At the leadership level, that frustration becomes even more pronounced. Firms want someone who understands their market, their clients, their technical discipline, their culture, their delivery model, their business development expectations, and their long-term growth plan.
In other words, they want a perfect candidate.
The problem is that the market doesn’t owe any firm a perfect candidate. The talent market is not broken simply because it refuses to bend to unrealistic expectations.
This doesn’t mean firms should lower their standards. Leadership roles matter. Technical quality matters. Client relationships and cultural alignment matter. No firm should casually place someone into a position that will affect people, operations, clients, quality, and long-term strategy. But there is a meaningful difference between having high standards and expecting the market to produce someone who has already been perfectly shaped for your firm by someone else’s organization.
Candidates are not created in a vacuum. They are shaped by the firms, leaders, clients, markets, and project environments they have worked within. A strong candidate from one organization may not use the same systems, pursue work the same way, manage teams the same way, or define leadership the same way as your firm does. That doesn't make them unqualified. It means they're coming from a different environment.
Why AEC firms need to rebuild their leadership pipelines
Somewhere along the way, many industries, including AEC, moved away from a more intentional model of internal talent development. Historically, firms built talent through apprenticeships, mentorship, technical training, supported education, and long-term career progression. Junior professionals learned not just how to perform tasks, but how the firm thought, how leaders made decisions, how clients were managed, and how technical judgment was developed over time. They became carriers of institutional knowledge.
That model was not perfect, but it had one major advantage: it produced leaders who understood the firm from the inside.
Today, many firms rely heavily on the external market to solve internal leadership gaps. External hiring is necessary. No firm can or should build every future leader internally. Outside talent brings new ideas, market intelligence, technical depth, and healthy disruption. But when recruiting becomes the primary solution to every leadership need, firms should ask a harder question: why was the bench not built before the need became urgent?
The perfect candidate usually doesn't exist because no other firm has been training someone specifically for your structure, your clients, your culture, your compensation model, and your future. They have been training them for theirs.
That creates a mismatch. Firms want someone who can step in immediately, carry the technical credibility, manage the team, win work, improve operations, mentor staff, understand the culture, and stay long-term. Meanwhile, candidates have often been developed in environments that gave them part, but not all, of what your role now requires. That isn't necessarily a candidate failure. It is often an industry development failure.
Why retaining mid-career talent is critical to succession
The mid-career talent problem makes this even more complicated. Across the industry, firms continue to struggle to retain professionals at the stage where people begin carrying real responsibility. They are no longer junior, but they are not always fully empowered. They manage projects, train younger staff, communicate with clients, absorb pressure, and keep work moving. They become the shock absorbers of the firm. That's where retention starts to break.
People don’t leave only because another firm offers more money. They leave because the math of staying stops making sense. If the workload rises, the responsibility expands, the pressure increases, and the future remains vague, then compensation becomes more than a paycheck. It becomes a signal of whether the firm understands the value being created.
Career progression matters. Compensation matters. Cultural alignment matters. So does the simple question of whether people can see a future that feels worth staying for.
If firms want future leaders, they need to build the conditions under which future leaders stay. That work starts much earlier than most firms want to admit. Recruiting entry-level talent is not enough. Hiring junior staff and hoping they eventually become principals isn't a leadership strategy. Firms need to be intentional about how people are trained, mentored, challenged, compensated, and exposed to the business.
Young professionals need technical development, but they also need to understand how firms operate. They need mentors who are not simply assigning work, but explaining judgment. Mid-career professionals need clarity. They need to understand whether they are on a real path toward leadership, ownership, subject matter expertise, or another meaningful track. Not everyone wants to be a principal, and not everyone should be. But everyone carrying serious responsibility deserves a clearer understanding of where that responsibility is leading.
Too often, leadership transition is treated as something that begins when current leaders are finally ready to step aside – but that’s too late. By then, the next generation may have already left, disengaged, or concluded that the firm was never serious about making room.
Leadership transition should be strategic and proactive, not accidental and reactive.
What the talent market is telling AEC firms
This is where the external talent market becomes a mirror. When firms can’t find the leader they want, it may not mean the market is empty. It may mean the role is too broad, the compensation is misaligned, the process is too slow, or the expectations are disconnected from what candidates actually do in the market. It may also mean the firm is asking one person to solve years of deferred organizational decisions.
Many leadership job descriptions read like wish lists. The ideal candidate is expected to deliver work, win work, manage people, grow revenue, improve operations, mentor staff, protect quality, and modernize systems. That person may exist, but they are rare. And if they are already successful somewhere else, they will not move just because your firm has a need.
They will need a reason.
That reason can’t be vague. “Great culture” isn’t enough. “Growth opportunity” isn’t enough. Strong candidates have heard that before. They want to understand the actual opportunity: the authority they will have, the support behind the role, the path forward, the health of the team, and whether the firm is truly willing to invest in the function they are being asked to lead.
Firms also need to move with discipline. Slow hiring processes damage search outcomes. When a firm takes too long to give feedback, delays interviews, revisits the profile repeatedly, or waits for a mythical better candidate, good candidates move on. A firm that can’t make decisions during the hiring process sends a message about how it may make decisions internally.
Compensation misalignment is another issue firms can't avoid. If a role requires leadership, client relationships, technical credibility, operational maturity, and growth responsibility, the compensation needs to reflect that. Firms can't ask for principal-level impact at project-manager-level compensation and then blame the market when candidates aren’t interested.
The market is giving feedback. Firms need to listen.
How to balance external recruiting with internal development
The answer is not to abandon external recruiting. The answer is to use it more honestly. Be clear about what is required on day one and what can be developed. Separate true must-haves from preferences. Move quickly when there is alignment. Pay for the level of impact being requested. And when a candidate is not perfect but brings the right foundation, ask whether the remaining gaps are coachable.
At the same time, firms need to recommit to internal development. If you want the perfect candidate tomorrow, look at your company structure today. How are you developing people? How are you retaining them? How are you compensating mid-career professionals who are carrying more of the firm’s weight? How are you making leadership transition visible before it becomes urgent?
The firms that answer those questions well will have more options. They will still recruit externally, but they will not be wholly dependent on the market to rescue them.
The firms that do not answer those questions will keep asking the market for perfection. And the market will keep refusing.
Zweig Group’s Talent consulting services help AEC firms strengthen the full talent lifecycle, from executive search and scalable recruiting to employee experience, retention, career pathing, and organizational design. Backed by industry data and decades of AEC expertise, our team helps firms build stronger leadership pipelines and create workplaces where top talent can grow and stay.
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Daryl Simons Jr. is a senior talent consultant at Zweig Group. Contact him at dsimons@zweiggroup.com. |
