Tag: Hiring

The Title Isn’t The Benchmark Anymore. The Job Is.

Written by Sarah Lucas on August 27, 2026. Posted in News & Insights.

August 27th, 2026

The landscape has changed. Compensation is only one visible symptom of a deeper shift in the building materials leadership market.

$850,000 isn’t the story. The job behind the $850,000 is.

A recent conversation with Craig Webb of Webb Analytics put a number in front of us that was difficult to ignore.

QXO’s incoming President and Chief Operating Officer, Ken West, will receive an annual base salary of $850,000. His target annual bonus is equal to 125 percent of that salary. Before long-term equity enters the equation, the target cash compensation alone approaches $2 million annually. QXO’s filing also includes substantial long-term and new-hire equity awards.

It is an extraordinary compensation package.

But the more interesting story is not the number.

It is the job behind the number.

QXO is not simply filling another President position in the building materials industry. Through the acquisitions of Beacon, Kodiak Building Partners and TopBuild, the company says it has assembled a platform representing approximately $18 billion in combined annual revenue, 28,000 employees and 1,150 locations. Its stated goal is to reach $50 billion in annual revenue within the decade through acquisitions and organic growth.

That changes the conversation about executive compensation because it changes the scale of executive responsibility.

For generations, titles in the building materials industry told us quite a bit about the position behind the office door.

President General Manager Vice President of Sales Regional Manager

Those titles still exist. What has changed is how little the title alone may tell us about the job.

A General Manager may oversee a single location and a relatively contained P&L. Another General Manager may oversee several locations, hundreds of employees, multiple markets and a dramatically larger financial responsibility.

A President may lead a multigenerational family business with deep roots in a particular region. Another may be helping lead a national organization with tens of thousands of employees through acquisitions, integrations, technology transformation and an aggressive growth strategy.

The title can be identical.

The job is not.

And increasingly, neither is the compensation.

That raises a larger question for an industry undergoing significant consolidation.

The Question

Will corporate-scale compensation begin to have a trickle-down effect on the rest of the building materials talent market?

Not because every family-owned business suddenly needs to compete with an $850,000 base salary. That would be an absurd comparison for most organizations.

The effect may be much more subtle.

As larger organizations continue acquiring businesses and expanding their reach, they create more leadership positions carrying broader responsibility, larger P&Ls, greater geographic scope and more sophisticated incentive structures.

That expands the opportunity set available to the industry’s strongest leaders.

A President at an independent company may be recruited for a divisional position within a much larger organization. A General Manager may suddenly have access to regional leadership. A successful VP of Sales may be presented with responsibility for a dramatically larger market and a compensation structure that reflects it.

When that happens often enough, compensation pressure does not remain confined to the largest corporations.

It begins moving through the talent market.

The question facing family-owned and independent businesses therefore may not be, “Can we match what QXO is paying?”

For most, that is the wrong benchmark.

The better question is:

The Better Benchmark

What is the job we are actually asking this person to do, and what is that responsibility worth in today’s market?

That distinction matters.

If a business is asking its next President to oversee multiple locations, modernize operations, build a leadership team, protect decades of customer relationships, develop a succession strategy, integrate new technology and carry complete financial responsibility for the organization, benchmarking that position against what the title earned ten years ago may no longer make sense.

The scope has changed.

The market around the role has changed.

And the opportunities available to the person qualified to fill it have changed as well.

This does not mean compensation becomes the only deciding factor.

Family-owned companies still possess advantages that large corporate organizations may have difficulty replicating.

A strong executive may value the ability to directly influence the future of a company. They may value access to ownership, faster decision-making, meaningful authority, community roots, culture, long-standing customer relationships or the opportunity to build something that carries a name and reputation beyond a quarterly earnings report.

Those things matter.

But they have to be real.

If an independent company cannot compete dollar for dollar with a corporate opportunity, then the authority, autonomy, influence and culture it presents to a candidate become even more important.

That connects directly to another challenge we continue to see in succession planning.

You cannot ask someone to accept less financial upside in exchange for the opportunity to lead and then withhold the authority required to actually lead.

At that point, the organization has surrendered both sides of the value proposition.

This is why compensation benchmarking based primarily on title is becoming increasingly dangerous.

The name on the door may be the same.

The scope behind it may have changed completely.

And consolidation is accelerating that change.

QXO describes the building products market as an $800 billion industry and has openly stated its intention to reach $50 billion in annual revenue within a decade. Its acquisitions of Beacon, Kodiak Building Partners and TopBuild further expand the scale and breadth of the organization across insulation, roofing, waterproofing, lumber and building materials.

Whether other companies pursue that same scale is almost beside the point.

The presence of organizations operating at that scale changes the environment in which everyone else competes for talent.

The building materials industry has historically been defined in large part by independent, regional and generational ownership. That identity is not disappearing overnight, nor should anyone assume that consolidation eliminates the competitive strength of those businesses.

But the landscape is changing.

And as the industry becomes increasingly influenced by large, acquisition-driven organizations, family-owned businesses may have to think differently about what it takes to attract and retain exceptional leadership.

Not necessarily by becoming corporations themselves.

Not necessarily by matching every compensation package.

But by understanding what the position they are offering is actually worth, what competing opportunities look like, and why an exceptional leader should choose theirs.

···

Because the title is no longer the benchmark.

The job is.

With Thanks

Our thanks to Craig Webb of Webb Analytics for bringing the QXO executive compensation filing to our attention and, more importantly, for continuing to challenge the industry to look beyond the headline numbers at what they mean. Craig will also be joining the SnapDragon podcast as a special guest, where we will continue conversations around consolidation, ownership, leadership and the forces reshaping the building materials industry.

Sources

QXO, Inc. Form 8-K, August 24, 2026; QXO investor materials, July 2026; QXO public acquisition and company materials.

The Offer Conversation Is the Final Interview

Written by Sarah Lucas on August 20, 2026. Posted in News & Insights.

August 20th, 2026

The offer letter is not the finish line of the hiring process. It is the beginning of a candidate’s final decision.

Most organizations invest weeks, sometimes months, identifying the right hire. Job descriptions are refined. Recruiters source passive talent. Multiple interviews are conducted. Reference checks are completed. Compensation is approved. Calendars are coordinated across departments.

Then, after all of that effort, many companies reduce the most critical stage of the hiring process to a single email with a PDF attachment. The offer is sent. The candidate is told to let us know what they think. And everyone waits.

Ironically, the stage that often receives the least strategic attention carries the greatest risk. That is where many hiring teams lose momentum, not because the offer is weak, but because the moment is treated as paperwork instead of persuasion, alignment, and trust building.

According to Talent Board’s 2024 Candidate Experience Benchmark Research, communication quality remains one of the strongest drivers of candidate satisfaction throughout the hiring process. Candidates consistently report that responsiveness, transparency, and meaningful communication influence not only whether they accept an offer, but also how they perceive the employer long before their first day on the job.

The offer conversation is not an administrative step. It is the final interview.

01 · The Wider LensBeyond compensation

When hiring managers think about offer acceptance, compensation is usually the first variable discussed. And compensation certainly matters, to an extent.

Decades of organizational research suggest candidates evaluate opportunities through a much wider lens. In their landmark meta-analysis published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Chapman, Uggerslev, Carroll, Piasentin, and Jones found that candidates evaluate organizations based on multiple factors, including organizational reputation, recruiter interactions, leadership, perceived fit, career growth, and the overall hiring experience, not compensation alone.

Research by Cable and Judge demonstrated that perceived organizational fit plays a significant role in job choice decisions. Candidates are asking themselves a fundamental question:

Can I see myself succeeding here?

Salary helps answer one question. Conversation answers dozens more.

02 · Facts vs. ConfidenceWhy the conversation matters

A written offer communicates facts. A conversation communicates confidence. Before candidates review salary, bonus, benefits, or relocation assistance, they want to understand something much more important: why me?

The strongest hiring leaders answer that question before discussing compensation. They explain why the candidate stood out. They describe the impact they expect the individual to make. They reinforce the opportunities that lie ahead. Only then do they discuss the offer itself.

Research in behavioral economics helps explain why this sequence matters. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s work on framing demonstrated that people evaluate identical information differently depending on the context in which it is presented.

A salary figure viewed in isolation becomes something to compare. The same salary discussed within the context of career growth, leadership confidence, and long-term opportunity becomes part of a much larger decision. The offer has not changed. The context has.

A written offer communicates facts. A conversation communicates confidence.

03 · The Real QuestionEvery hiring process ends with one question

Long before candidates ask themselves whether the salary is competitive, they are asking a much more personal question:

Do I believe this is the right move?

That question rarely gets answered in an offer letter. It gets answered during conversation. One of the greatest advantages of a verbal offer is the opportunity to uncover uncertainty before it becomes hesitation. Experienced recruiters and hiring leaders often ask questions such as these:

Questions That Discover, Not Persuade

How are you feeling about everything we have discussed?

Is there anything that would prevent you from accepting if we move forward?

What concerns do you still have?

These questions are not designed to persuade. They are designed to discover. Many declined offers have little to do with compensation. Concerns often center around reporting relationships, career trajectory, relocation, work-life balance, family considerations, start dates, or the inevitable counteroffer from a current employer. Those concerns are rarely cleared up over email.

04 · The Fragile WindowThe highest-risk moment in hiring

The period between extending an offer and receiving an acceptance is often the most fragile point in the hiring process. Candidates seek advice from spouses, mentors, colleagues, and friends. Current employers begin preparing counteroffers. Questions that seemed insignificant during interviews suddenly become major decision points.

Research published in the Academy of Management Annals emphasizes that candidate experience is cumulative. Every interaction shapes how candidates evaluate an employer, and the offer stage is the moment when that entire experience is tested.

Organizations that remain engaged during this period, through thoughtful and transparent conversation, help reduce uncertainty before competing narratives take hold.

05 · Where A Partner Earns ItThe recruiter’s value does not end with the search

One of the most overlooked responsibilities of an executive recruiter begins after the interviews are complete.

The best recruiters do not simply communicate compensation. They facilitate alignment. They identify concerns before they become declined offers. They help hiring managers understand what truly motivates candidates. They prepare candidates for one of the most significant career decisions they will make.

In many searches, the offer conversation is just as valuable as sourcing the candidate.

The offer conversation is where a search is won or lost. Managing that final window is where a real search partner earns the engagement.

Why Work With SnapDragon

The SnapDragon Standard

We don’t send offers hoping they work. We send offers knowing how they will land.

Leadership Architecture · Precision Search · Since 2004

Private Equity · Manufacturing · Distribution · Retail

www.snapdragonassociates.com

References

Cable, D. M., and Judge, T. A. (1996). Person-Organization Fit, Job Choice Decisions, and Organizational Entry. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 67(3), 294 to 311.

Chapman, D. S., Uggerslev, K. L., Carroll, S. A., Piasentin, K. A., and Jones, D. A. (2005). Applicant Attraction to Organizations and Job Choice: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Correlates of Recruiting Outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(5), 928 to 944.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kahneman, D., and Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263 to 291.

Society for Human Resource Management. (2024). Candidate Experience and Communication in Hiring.

Talent Board. (2024). Candidate Experience Benchmark Research (CandE Benchmark Research).

Academy of Management Annals. (2023). The Collective Candidate Experience: Theory and Business Unit Consequences.

The Degree Requirement is Disappearing. What Replaces It Decides Everything

Written by Sarah Lucas on August 6, 2026. Posted in News & Insights.

August 6th, 2026

We have been hearing the same thing from a lot of our hiring managers lately: the four-year degree is coming off the requirements list. Clients who used to treat a bachelor’s as non-negotiable now care far more about who has actually run the plant, carried the number, or built the team than about where someone went to school.

We are seeing it across several of our searches right now, and the data backs up what we are hearing in these conversations.

The Client SignalWhy our clients are dropping it

When we ask why, the answer is almost always some version of the same thing. Finding the right person matters more than checking the credential box. More than one client has told us their strongest operator would have been screened out by their own job posting, and in a market this tight, they cannot afford to lose good people to a line on a form.

Others have simply stopped seeing the connection between a degree earned years ago and how someone runs a shift, a branch, or a number today. What they want from us now is proof of performance, not proof of enrollment. The wider market is moving the same direction.

The DataThe shift is real, and the math is simple

The 2026 numbers show it. Seventy percent of employers now say they hire on skills, up from 65 percent a year ago, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. The old shortcuts are fading with it. In 2019, nearly 73 percent of employers screened candidates on GPA. This year only 42 percent still do.

The logic is hard to argue with. Roughly 62 percent of American adults do not hold a bachelor’s degree, so every unnecessary degree filter quietly removes most of the market before the first conversation.

70%

Of employers now hire on skills, up from 65 percent a year ago. GPA screening has fallen from nearly 73 percent in 2019 to 42 percent today. The shortcut is disappearing across the market, not just on our searches.

The Reality CheckWhat we tell clients before they celebrate

Here is the part we make sure our clients hear. Taking the line off the posting is the easy part. Harvard Business School, working with the Burning Glass Institute, looked at what actually happened after companies dropped the requirement. On paper it looked like a movement. In practice, removing the line raised non-degree hires by only about 3.5 percentage points, and across the wider market fewer than 1 in 700 hires were affected. The same research found that 45 percent of the companies that publicly dropped the requirement did so in name only.

We see exactly why. The requirement leaves the job posting, but the old instinct stays in the room. The Indeed Hiring Lab reported late in 2025 that the share of job postings asking for a bachelor’s degree has been climbing back up since early 2024, even as the skills-first conversation gets louder. Hiring teams keep screening for the credential they said they would stop screening for, because nothing was built to replace it.

1 in 700

Hires actually affected after companies dropped the degree requirement, with the change lifting non-degree hires only about 3.5 points. 45 percent of the companies that publicly dropped it did so in name only.

What WorksWhat the clients who get results do differently

The clients who get real change from this do one thing differently. They do not just delete a line. They put a real way to read people in its place. The research shows the payoff. At companies leading skills-based hiring, non-degree hires stay longer, with retention running 10 percentage points higher, and non-degree workers who moved into roles that used to require a degree earned 25 percent more on average.

That matches what we watch happen in our own searches.

The credential was never the thing that predicted performance. It was a stand-in for it. Take the stand-in away and you need a sharper read on the real thing, which is the work we do on every search through our SPACE framework.

The Leadership StakesFor the leaders we search for, the stakes are higher

For the leadership roles we work on, this matters more, not less. Our clients in building materials, manufacturing, and distribution are staring at a thinning bench. Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute project the sector will need 3.8 million workers through 2033, with close to 1.9 million roles at risk of going unfilled, and the pressure sits heaviest at the top as the plant managers, operations executives, and engineering leaders we all rely on retire faster than the pipeline replaces them.

1.9M

Roles at risk of going unfilled by 2033, inside a projected need for 3.8 million workers. The pressure sits heaviest at the top, where the leaders companies rely on are retiring faster than the pipeline replaces them.

When a candidate’s degree is three decades behind them, it tells us almost nothing about how they will run a region or a P&L next quarter. What they have actually built tells us everything.

Where We Come InWidening the pool is the easy part

So when a client tells us they are ready to drop the degree requirement, our answer is the same every time. Good. Now let us make sure you can read the people who walk through the door without it. That is the part we own. We evaluate every candidate on proven performance, sector depth, and fit, then position each one so you know how they will land before the offer goes out.

Taking a line off a posting widens the pool. Knowing exactly who to trust in that pool is what puts the right leader in the role and keeps them there.

Drop the degree line, and the read on the candidate becomes everything. That read is the search itself, and it is what we do.

See How We Search

The SnapDragon Standard

We don’t send offers hoping they work. We send offers knowing how they will land.

Leadership Architecture · Precision Search · Since 2004

Private Equity · Manufacturing · Distribution · Retail

www.snapdragonassociates.com

Sources

National Association of Colleges and Employers, Job Outlook 2026. Skills-based hiring at 70 percent, up from 65 percent; GPA screening down from 73 percent in 2019 to 42 percent in 2026. naceweb.org/job-market/trends-and-predictions/employer-use-of-skills-based-hiring-practices-grows

Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute, Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice. 3.5-point lift, fewer than 1 in 700 hires, 45 percent in name only, retention and salary findings. hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work

Indeed Hiring Lab. Share of postings requiring a bachelor’s degree climbing since early 2024. Reported November 2025.

Deel and Burning Glass analysis. Roughly 62 percent of U.S. adults hold no bachelor’s degree. deel.com/deel-works/skills-first-hiring-degree-requirements

Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute talent study. 3.8 million workers needed through 2033, roughly 1.9 million roles at risk.

The Market Pays for Margin, Not Volume

Written by Sarah Lucas on July 30, 2026. Posted in News & Insights.

July 30th, 2026

Five things moved building materials hiring this month. June jobs came in soft, the housing rebound was almost entirely multifamily, and the searches that cleared fastest all pointed at the same profile. Here is July, and what it changes about who you hire.

Labor MarketJune hiring missed, and nobody is moving

Employers added 57,000 jobs in June against a consensus near 115,000, and April and May were revised down by a combined 74,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment fell to 4.2 percent, but the move came from people leaving the labor force rather than getting hired. Participation dropped to 61.5 percent, the lowest since March 2021.

The May Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey said the same thing another way. Openings held at 7.6 million and the quits rate stayed at 1.9 percent, at or below 2 percent for close to a year now. Openings exist. Movement does not.

57K

Jobs added in June against a consensus near 115,000, with April and May revised down a combined 74,000. Every one of those numbers describes a labor market. None describes the leader who has to run a building materials business inside it.

Housing & MaterialsThe housing rebound is multifamily, not single-family

June housing starts rose 19 percent to a 1.427 million annualized pace, the largest monthly increase since May 2023, on Census and HUD data. Composition matters more than the headline. Multifamily starts jumped 76.2 percent to 532,000, while single-family starts slipped to 895,000 and sit 3.2 percent below June 2025. Permits, the forward-looking number, fell across the board, with single-family pointing at a second straight year of contraction.

Builder sentiment confirms the direction. The NAHB Housing Market Index read 34 in July, below 40 for 15 consecutive months, with more builders cutting prices than in either prior month. Cost is moving the wrong way at the same time. Building material prices are up 3.5 percent year over year, the largest annual increase since early 2023, with metal molding and trim up roughly 50 percent on Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs.

+76.2%

The multifamily starts jump to 532,000 that carried the June rebound, while single-family slipped to 895,000. Volume is flat, mix is rotating toward multifamily and repair and remodel, and margin is made or lost on pricing discipline rather than on demand.

Where We Are SearchingCompanies are hiring where they intend to hold share

The hiring is not landing evenly. Across July, three regions absorbed most of our new search activity, and all three point the same direction. Companies are putting experienced customer-facing leadership into the markets where they intend to hold or take share.

Northern New Jersey & New York City 6 new searches / past month

Most are Outside Sales and Regional Sales positions. Companies here are continuing to invest in customer-facing talent to drive growth.

South Central U.S. 4 new roles / recent

New roles opened across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Hiring activity across the region is accelerating, and it is one to watch closely over the next two quarters.

Southwest 5 searches / past three months

Activity spans Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Southern California. The majority are sales-focused, as companies invest in experienced field sales talent while these markets keep expanding.

M&A ActivityConsolidation slowed at the top, not at the bottom

The Webb Analytics Deals Database tracked 61 acquisitions covering 773 locations through July 15, against 62 deals covering 1,324 locations at the same point last year. Same deal volume, roughly 40 percent fewer facilities. Four transactions carried most of the count, led by QXO acquiring TopBuild at 437 locations and Kodiak Building Partners at 114. No other first-half deal involved more than 15 locations.

Read that as a hiring signal. The platform buyers are still buying, but the mid-market transactions closing right now are small and operator-dependent. A six-location acquisition does not arrive with a bench. It arrives with one general manager who may or may not stay, and an integration that lives or dies on whoever the buyer puts over it.

40%

Fewer facilities year over year on the same deal volume. The mid-market transactions closing now are small and operator-dependent, and they arrive with a single leader rather than a bench.

The ProfileThe margin-holder clears the offer, not the growth operator

The searches moving fastest are not the ones asking for growth-market operators. They are the ones asking for leaders who have held gross margin through a flat volume year, priced through tariff-driven input swings without losing the pro account, and integrated a small acquisition without losing the branch manager who came with it. That is a narrower pool than a general operations or sales leadership search, and it is why these searches are running longer.

It is also showing up across the roles we are closing. Recently, we have closed searches for a CCO, a CEO, a VP of Sales, and HR leadership, plus a steady run of general manager roles where the mandate is to hold a branch or region through flat volume.

Private equity is a large part of that demand. When a sponsor closes on a platform or an add-on, the first calls are for leadership: the operator who will protect margin through integration, and the commercial leader who will hold the customer base while it happens.

Inside A SearchWhat this looks like in practice

Case Study

Rebuilding operations leadership at a national HVAC manufacturer

A national HVAC manufacturer running eight plants lost its VP of Operations without warning, at a company already working through a difficult operating environment. Rather than backfill the role as it had existed, the board treated the exit as an inflection point and upgraded the mandate.

Two problems had to be solved by the same hire. First, margin discipline in a flat, cost-inflationary market: revenue had been flat for two years while tariff-driven copper and steel costs, freight surcharges, and tightening labor ate into EBITDA. Second, operational modernization at national scale, including standing up a green-field plant in Arizona from a clean slate.

We screened adjacent industrials against one evidence standard. P&L ownership at comparable multi-site scale, with before-and-after margin data tied to the candidate’s own tenure. Specific, attributable margin-protection moves. Share growth without discounting. Direct green-field startup experience. Every finalist’s claimed impact was verified through reference checks built to isolate what the candidate controlled from what the market or a predecessor handed them.

Client and candidate details anonymized. A search brief template and candidate scorecard adapted from this engagement are available on request.

We evaluate against SPACE for exactly this reason. Credentials tell you someone ran a region through a growth cycle. SPACE tells you whether they held margin while volume stood still, and whether they will do it again in your seat.

What It Means For HiringWhat this means for your bench

This market is not going to resolve on a predictable timeline. Single-family demand is rate-bound, multifamily is volatile month to month, input costs are moving on trade policy, and consolidation has narrowed to a handful of platform buyers. The companies that build real advantage from here will be the ones whose commercial and operations leadership were built for a flat-volume, cost-pressured market rather than the one that came before it.

That starts with an honest look at the spec. Most building materials leadership job descriptions in circulation today were written for a market that was still expanding, and quietly never updated. Hiring against that spec checks the box and misses the mandate. We rewrite the profile around what this market is actually paying for, then run the search against it, using SPACE to surface the judgment that never shows up cleanly on a resume.

If your leadership bench was built for the last building cycle and not this one, that gap is worth closing before the next one tests it. Let’s put your leadership against the profile the market is paying for today.

Tell us the seat you need to get right this year, and we will show you who clears the offer in this market.

Talk To Our Team

The SnapDragon Standard

We don’t send offers hoping they work. We send offers knowing how they will land.

Leadership Architecture · Precision Search · Since 2004

Private Equity · Manufacturing · Distribution · Retail

www.snapdragonassociates.com

Sources

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Situation, June 2026. Released July 2, 2026. bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, May 2026. Released June 30, 2026. bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm

U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, New Residential Construction, June 2026. Released July 17, 2026. census.gov/construction/nrc

National Association of Home Builders, Housing Market Index, July 2026, and NAHB analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index data. nahb.org

Webb Analytics Deals Database, LBM Midyear M&A Report, July 2026. webb-analytics.com

Two Decades of Change in Building Materials and What It Means for Hiring

Written by Sarah Lucas on July 23, 2026. Posted in News & Insights.

July 23rd, 2026

Market Intelligence · Leadership Hiring

Two forces have reshaped building materials over the last two decades, and neither one is finished. Private equity has spent years buying small operations and folding them into larger platforms. Technology moved from optional to standard across the COVID years, and the industry is now working out where AI belongs. Both changes land in the same place, which is the leadership bench.

Mark Barnard has watched the full arc of it. What follows is his read on where the market has moved, where it is still moving, and the part of this business that no amount of consolidation or technology is going to change.

Consolidation & OwnershipThe Numbers Became the Qualification

Consolidation is the single largest structural change in the sector. Private equity has been the engine of it, and the buying has not slowed. That shift did not only change ownership. It changed the standard a leader is measured against.

Mark Barnard

Private equity does not know the difference between a 2×4 and a window. But they know their numbers, and they expect their operators and management in those businesses to understand the numbers.

Under previous ownership, deep product knowledge and a long tenure were often enough to qualify someone for the operating seat. Inside a platform structure, they are the starting point. The leader who holds the seat is the one who can speak to margin, to working capital, and to the levers behind both without translation.

This is the exact gap a resume will not show you. It is why our evaluation runs past the credential. The SPACE framework exists to measure how a leader actually operates and decides, because the platform buyer is going to test that within the first two quarters, whether the search process did or not.

Technology & AdoptionAI Is a Demand Signal, Not a Headcount Plan

This industry was not running video interviews or video meetings before 2020. Now it is the norm. The same adoption curve is happening again with AI, and Mark reads it against a pattern he has already lived through once.

Mark Barnard

We talked back in the late eighties that the dot-com world was going to change everything, that it was going to put people out of work. It did not. It created the demand for more, better, stronger people who understood how to embrace technology.

The practical read for hiring companies is straightforward. AI is not thinning the leadership requirement. It is raising it. Tools that let one person cover more ground, make faster decisions, and build their own analysis change what a strong operator looks like. The question in the interview is no longer whether a candidate is comfortable with technology. It is what they have already put to work, and what it returned.

Workforce DemographicsThe Demographic Math Is Not Reversing

The workforce in this sector is aging, and the openings that creates run in both directions, in labor and in leadership. Mark is direct about where that leaves the hiring market.

Demand is increasing, not decreasing.

Consolidation compounds it. Every platform that absorbs an operation needs someone to run the combined business, and the bench inside these companies is thinner than the org chart suggests. Companies that begin a search when the seat opens are starting from behind. Companies that keep a live read on who is available, what they are earning, and what would move them are the ones running searches on their own timeline instead of the market’s.

Client RelationshipsWhat Does Not Change

Clients come to us every day with questions that have nothing to do with an active search. How to build out a sales force. How to structure sales compensation. What a competitor is paying. Those conversations are the relationship, and they are the reason the search work lands when it matters.

Mark Barnard

You are never going to replace that personal connection. AI is not going to replace being able to really listen, really understand what your client is saying, and be able to coach and advise them.

You can use technology to find people, to reach people, to market to people. From idea to deliverable, there are still people involved, and the judgment about whether this leader fits this company at this stage of its ownership is made by someone who has been in the market long enough to know. That is the work. It has been the work since 2004, and it will be the work through whatever the next platform cycle brings.

Hiring StrategyWhat This Means for Your Next Hire

If your business has been acquired, is being courted, or is competing against a platform that was, the leadership profile you hired against five years ago is no longer the profile that survives. Financial fluency, technology adoption, and the ability to run a business through an ownership change are now baseline requirements rather than differentiators. Building the search around that from the intake conversation forward is the difference between a hire that holds and a search you run twice.

The SnapDragon Standard

We don’t send offers hoping they work. We send offers knowing how they will land.

If your leadership bench needs to hold through the next platform cycle, talk to SnapDragon.

Start the Conversation →

Leadership Architecture · Precision Search · Since 2004

Private Equity · Manufacturing · Distribution · Retail

Tariffs Changed What A Strong Operations Leader Looks Like

Written by Sarah Lucas on July 20, 2026. Posted in News & Insights.

July 16th, 2026

Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper reached 50 percent this year. Construction input prices climbed at their fastest annualized pace since 2022 in early 2026. Under current policy, aggregate construction costs are estimated to rise roughly 8 percent.

50%

Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper, as of this year

Fastest Since 2022

The pace of construction input price growth in early 2026

~8%

Estimated rise in aggregate construction costs under current policy

Every one of those numbers describes a cost environment. None of them describes the person who has to run a business inside it.

That person is who our clients are actually searching for right now, and the spec for that seat has moved more in eighteen months than in the decade before it.

The operations leader who ran a stable supply chain in 2021 is not the same candidate who can protect a P&L through 50 percent metal tariffs.

The ShiftThe Mandate Has Shifted From Managing Supply to Defending Margin

Look at where the demand is concentrating. At PE-backed platforms, the COO seat has moved away from driving volume growth toward operating discipline, acquisition integration, and margin protection without the tailwind of a rising market. The candidates closing at the top of that band are being measured on working capital efficiency and EBITDA protection, not top-line growth.

COO (PE-Backed)$200K–$285K Base

Total compensation at PE-backed platforms regularly clears $450K.

The same shift shows up one level down. Directors of Manufacturing are winning offers now on measurable output gains through automation and labor-efficient process redesign, not on the size of the crew they manage. Operators with engineered wood products experience are commanding a premium above that band, because EWP output has stayed essentially flat while sawmill employment keeps declining.

Director of Manufacturing$190K–$230K Base

EWP experience commands $15K–$25K above the standard band.

And at the general manager level, P&L ownership at scale has become the dividing line. A GM running a single yard and a GM running a multi-location distribution platform carry the same title on LinkedIn. Only one of them has proven they can hit plan in a flat, tariff-pressured market, and that is the one every client wants.

From a Recent SearchWhat This Looks Like Inside a Search

VP of Operations, Regional Building Products Distributor

We ran this search for a client that came to us for a volume-growth operator. Three weeks in, their landed steel costs moved again, and the brief changed on the call. The seat was no longer about growing the top line. It was about holding margin against a supply base that had become the largest risk on the P&L.

The candidate who closed was not the highest-volume operator in the slate. They were the one who had already rebuilt a single-source supply base across several regional suppliers during an earlier tariff cycle, and who had written price-escalation caps into supplier contracts before the cost shock landed. They had defended margin under pressure once, and they could walk the client through exactly how. That judgment was the entire search, and it was nowhere in the job description the client sent us on day one.

That is the pattern across every operations and manufacturing search we are running. The job description written eighteen months ago is not the job description that gets filled today. Cost volatility rewrote the brief, and most companies have not rewritten the spec to match it.

The Narrow PoolThe Candidates Who Fit This Profile Are Not Easy to Find

The skill set is specific: sourcing diversification, escalation protection in supplier contracts, and the operational discipline to hold margin through a policy environment that changes by the quarter. That is a narrower pool than a generic operations leader search, and it is why these searches are taking longer and paying more.

We evaluate against SPACE for exactly this reason. Credentials tell you someone managed a supply chain. SPACE tells you whether they managed one under pressure, and whether they will do it again in your seat.

The TakeawayWhat This Means for Your Operation

Cost volatility is not going to resolve on a predictable timeline, and the operations leaders who can hold margin through it are not going to get any easier to find. The companies that come through the next several quarters intact will be the ones whose operations and procurement leadership were built for this environment, not the one that existed before the tariffs landed.

That starts with an honest look at the spec. Most operations job descriptions in this sector were written for a stable supply chain and were quietly never updated. Hiring against that spec today fills the seat and misses the mandate. We help clients rewrite the profile around what the market actually demands now, then run the search against it, using SPACE to surface the margin discipline and sourcing judgment that never show up cleanly on a resume.

If your operations bench was built for the last environment and not this one, that gap is worth closing before the next cost shock tests it.

Let’s look at your leadership against the profile the market is paying for today.

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The SnapDragon Standard

We don’t send offers hoping they work. We send offers knowing how they will land.

The 500,000 Hires Nobody Is Actually Planning For

Written by Sarah Lucas on July 20, 2026. Posted in News & Insights.

July 9th, 2026

Two numbers are circulating in this industry right now, and they are usually quoted in different rooms.

The first: the sector is projected to need roughly 499,000 new workers this year.

The second: in February, construction posted the slowest hiring rate on record. BLS data released on March 31 confirmed a 3.3 percent hiring rate. Job openings fell to 202,000, down from 230,000 in January and 53,000 below where they sat a year earlier.

499K

New workers the sector is projected to need this year

3.3%

February’s hiring rate, the slowest on record. BLS, released March 31.

Read those together. A sector that says it needs half a million people is hiring at the slowest pace it has ever recorded.

That is not a demand problem. That is a capacity-to-hire problem, and it does not get solved by posting more jobs.

The market is not soft. It is selective.

Where the Real Risk SitsThe Number That Gets Quoted Is Not the Seat That Stops a Company

The half-million figure is a floor-level number. It describes crews, yards, and production lines. It is real, and it is not the number that costs you a quarter.

A distribution center can run understaffed on the floor for a quarter. It cannot run without a general manager. A regional sales organization can absorb two open territories. It cannot absorb the loss of the leader who holds the top ten accounts. An operations group can backfill supervisors from within. It cannot replace a P&L owner at scale, and P&L ownership at scale is the dividing line in every general management search we are running.

Here is what that tier actually looks like in Q2 2026.

The general manager’s base compensation ranges from $165K to $340K. That is the widest band on our list and the most misread. A GM running a single yard at $30M in revenue and a GM running a multi-location distribution platform at $200M carry the same title on LinkedIn. The market is paying for the second one and competing hard for it. The candidates closing at the top of that band have full P&L authority and have hit the plan in a flat market.

General Manager$165K–$340K Base

VP of Sales is landing at $170K to $235K base, with OTE typically between $250K and $320K. The brief has changed. Two years ago, that seat was hired to grow the top line. Now it is hired to protect the customer base and build sales discipline that does not depend on a rising market.

VP of Sales$170K–$235K Base

OTE typically $250K–$320K.

At PE-backed platforms, COO base runs $200K to $285K, and total compensation regularly clears $450K. The mandate there is working capital efficiency and EBITDA protection, not volume.

COO (PE-Backed)$200K–$285K Base

Total compensation regularly clears $450K.

4–6%

Base compensation growth across building materials, year over year. In the Northeast, offers are landing 10 to 15 percent above national averages because of competition for off-market talent. Those are not projections. Those are the offers our clients are making.

Timing RiskThe Reactive Search Is Where the Cost Sits

The reactive search begins the day a general manager gives notice. Every variable is already against you. The seat is open, the team knows it, competitors know it, and the market hears urgency in every conversation you have. You are negotiating from a position you did not choose.

Meanwhile, the candidates you want are not waiting. Leaders with multi-state P&L experience and acquisition integration on their record are taking two and three offers in parallel, and we are watching decision windows close in 10 to 15 days. A search that starts cold does not survive that clock.

2x Salary

The approximate cost of losing a top performer, once you count lost revenue, ramp-up, and the hit to the people who stayed. And the cost of getting it wrong is not the fee.

Building the BenchThe Planned Search Begins Before the Seat Opens

The planned search begins before the seat opens. It is a map of who exists in your market, at what level, in what geography, at what number, and who would take a call. That map does not expire.

~45

Strategic leadership roles placed across VP, GM, and sales leadership in the first half of 2026, most of them before the seat became an emergency.

Our ProcessHow We Run It

We do not send a slate of resumes and wait for feedback. We evaluate against SPACE because credentials tell you what someone has done, and SPACE tells you how they will perform in the seat you are actually filling. Then we walk you through our thinking on each person and why we believe they fit what you are building.

We do not stop at the acceptance either. A leadership hire that leaves within the first year is not a placement. It is a search you get to run twice. The retention architecture starts before the offer letter and continues well past the start date, because we do not send offers hoping they work. We send offers knowing how they will land.

The TakeawayWhat This Means for Your Bench

The half-million number will keep running through every outlook this year, and it will keep pointing at the wrong tier. The seat that actually decides your next four quarters is not the one the headlines describe. It is the general manager, the regional sales leader, the operations head whose absence a business feels immediately and cannot backfill from within.

Protecting against that is not a search you run when the seat opens. It is intelligence you build before it does: a live map of who leads in your market, at what level, in what geography, at what number, and who would take a call. That is the work we do ahead of an opening, so that when one arrives, you are choosing from a bench instead of starting from zero against a 10- to 15-day decision window.

When we do run the search, we evaluate against SPACE rather than credentials alone, and we hold the relationship past the acceptance, because a leadership hire that leaves inside a year is a cost, not a placement.

That is the difference between filling a seat and protecting a business.

If a single unplanned departure would expose your operations or commercial bench, that is the conversation worth having now, while it is still a plan and not an emergency. Reach out, and we will start there.

Connect With SnapDragon →

The SnapDragon Standard

We don’t send offers hoping they work. We send offers knowing how they will land.

The Master Builder Disappeared. The Hard Part Didn’t.

Written by Sarah Lucas on July 20, 2026. Posted in News & Insights.

June 11th, 2026

What the data says about senior hiring, and what the building trades teach us about getting it right.

OriginsThe Old Way Stopped Working

There was a time when one man built your house. He read the land, dug the footing, poured the foundation, raised the frame, set the windows, shingled the roof, and hung the doors. We called him a master builder, and the title was earned. But it carried a quiet ceiling. He was excellent at some of the work and merely competent at the rest, because no one is excellent at all of it, and the house reflected exactly that. Its quality was capped by whatever trade he was weakest in.

That model did not fade because we stopped admiring craftsmanship. It faded because the math stopped working. As buildings grew more complex, the gap between competent and excellent at each stage started to matter more than the convenience of one set of hands. So the work broke apart. A single build now moves through a site crew, a foundation team, framers, a glazing crew, roofers, mechanical trades, drywall, and finish carpenters, each doing one thing at a level the old master builder never reached outside his own trade. The house goes up faster, performs better, and fails less often.

The ShiftThe Role of Judgment

It is tempting to read that as a story about specialization and stop there. The more useful part is what it did to the person in charge.

The general contractor did not become less important when the work split apart. The job moved up a level and got harder. The scarce skill on a modern build is no longer swinging a hammer well. It is knowing which framing crew holds its dates, which concrete team passes inspection the first time, which roofer does clean work and which one looks sharp in the bid and falls apart on the deck. The bottleneck used to be labor, measured in hands and hours. Now it is judgment about people. The contractor who knows the trades wins. The one who guesses pays for it later, in change orders and tear-outs.

Org ArchitectureThe Hidden Structure of a Company

Look closely at any company and you are looking at a structure. The org chart is not a ranking of importance. It is a load diagram. A business is built in layers, the way a building is.

Foundation

The operational and financial roles everything rests on.

Frame

The leadership spine that holds the company’s shape under load.

Envelope

The commercial roles that face the market.

Finish Work

The roles that make the whole thing scale and feel complete.

Every layer matters. None of them carries the same kind of risk. A weak hire three layers off the frame is a cosmetic problem. You see it, you fix it, the building still stands. A wrong hire in the frame compromises everything built on top of it, because every layer above inherits the flaw.

That is not a metaphor reaching for effect. It is one of the most consistently measured failures in business, and the numbers are worse than most leaders assume.

46%

Of new hires fail within their first 18 months

89%

Of those failures are about fit and judgment, not technical skill

213%

Of salary: what replacing a senior leader can cost

The ResearchWhy Senior Hires Fail

Consider the leadership layer specifically. McKinsey, studying CEO transitions, found that between a third and half of new chief executives are seen as failing within their first 18 months. A broader study of more than 20,000 new hires by Leadership IQ, a research and training firm, found that 46% failed within 18 months while just 19% were an unqualified success.

Read that again. Fewer than one in five senior hires is a clean win.

The bill for getting it wrong is not the salary. Reviewing years of turnover research, the Center for American Progress found that replacing a senior or executive employee can run as high as 213% of their annual salary once you count the open seat, the lost productivity, the disruption underneath them, and the second search.

$400K+

The approximate loss on a $200,000 leadership seat once you apply the 213% figure, before the new person has framed a single wall. A wrong hire in a load-bearing seat is among the most expensive mistakes a company can make, and it almost never announces itself the day you make it.

But the most important number is not the cost. It is the cause.

When Leadership IQ examined why those hires failed, only 11% came down to a lack of technical skill. The other 89% failed on the things a resume cannot show and a standard interview rarely tests: coachability, emotional control, motivation, and temperament. Fit and judgment, not competence. More telling still, 82% of the hiring managers admitted that, looking back, they had seen the warning signs during the interview and moved ahead anyway. Sit with what that means. The interview is built to measure the 11%. The 89%, where the seat is actually won or lost, is the part it consistently misses.

Talent VisibilityThe Passive Market Problem

This is the same problem the general contractor solved generations ago. He cannot lay brick at the level of the mason or run conduit like the electrician, which is the entire reason those trades exist. So he does not evaluate the craft by performing it. He evaluates the people: who delivers under pressure, who holds their dates, who only presents well in the meeting. He knows it from watching them on real sites over years, not from the bid sheet. Senior hiring demands exactly that kind of knowing, and the interview is a poor substitute for it.

And the people worth knowing are almost never the ones answering the posting. In research across 18,000 professionals in 26 countries, LinkedIn found that roughly 70% of the workforce is passive: employed, performing, and not looking. A job posting competes for the 30% who are actively on the market. The operator quietly running the best division in your sector, the one you actually want, sits in the 70% who never see it, has not touched a resume in years, and will move only for the right person making the right call. That market, the one that never lands in your inbox, is where the frame talent lives.

Industry RealityThe Leadership Depth Challenge

Nowhere is this sharper right now than in building materials and construction, where the trade is living the master builder problem in real time. Associated Builders and Contractors estimates the industry needs to add roughly 349,000 workers in 2026, and by the association’s own account, more than half of that is simply to replace people retiring out. Close to one in five workers in the field is already 55 or older. The most experienced layer, the people carrying decades of judgment about how things actually get built, is leaving faster than it can be replaced.

This has stopped being only a labor shortage and become a leadership depth problem.

Not enough superintendents, operations leaders, general managers, and commercial heads ready to hold the frame when the experienced ones walk. The seats that carry the most weight are exactly the ones getting hardest to fill with people who can actually carry them. In a market like that, the interview-and-hope approach is not just expensive. It is a structural risk.

Which is the quiet shift underneath all of it.

The Shift UnderneathThe Foundation

Superior outcomes are no longer about who you know. They’re about what you know about who you know.

The companies building the most durable organizations have internalized that the most consequential specialist they engage is not on their own org chart at all. It is the one who lives inside the labor market of their trade, the way a general contractor lives among the crews, who can read the 89% the interview misses, and who already knows the names inside the passive 70% because they have spent years in real conversations with them.

That is the role SnapDragon was built to play, and it is why we do not search across every industry.

We are specialists in the exact sense that this whole story has been about. For more than twenty years, our work has lived inside one world: lumber and building materials, manufacturing, distribution, retail, and the private equity that backs them. We are not generalists who recruit a building products VP on Monday and a hospital administrator on Tuesday. We know this trade the way a seasoned contractor knows his crews. We know who holds their numbers, who leads well when the market turns, who looks strong on paper and comes apart under load, and who is quietly the best operator in the sector and has never once answered a cold message. We carry that knowledge because we have spent two decades in real conversations with the people who run this industry, not because we ran a search string the morning your seat came open.

20+ Yrs

Inside building materials, since 2004

95%

Post-search retention

30%

Faster time-to-hire than the industry average

That is what makes SnapDragon the premiere search partner for the building materials industry. Not the size of a database, but the depth of knowing the people in one trade, completely. It is also why our searches hold. When the role you are hiring into carries real weight, you do not want a firm that can recruit anyone. You want the one that already knows the few who can carry it, and whose searches are still carrying it years later.

If you have a load-bearing seat coming open, talk to the firm that already knows who can carry it.

Connect With SnapDragon →

The SnapDragon Standard

In a load-bearing seat, the right hire is never the one who interviews best. It’s the one the market already trusts to carry the weight.

The Reset is Real: What Building Materials Hiring Looks Like Right Now

Written by Sarah Lucas on July 20, 2026. Posted in News & Insights.

May 28th, 2026

A monthly read on hiring across LBM, distribution, manufacturing, and private equity, straight from the SnapDragon desk. For clients and candidates.

The hiring market in building materials has shifted. If offers feel harder to land lately, you are reading the market correctly.

Companies moving deeper into 2026 are more selective and more intentional about who they hire. The rushed processes, inflated comp packages, and name-your-number environments that defined the last few cycles have slowed considerably. Candidates are running smarter searches. Companies are interviewing harder. The conversations that turn into hires look nothing like they did 12 months ago.

That is not a problem. It is a recalibration. The companies and candidates who adjust to it move forward. The ones still operating by 2022 rules stall. Here is what we are hearing across the desk, every week, in real searches.

Market PulseIndustry Brief

You already know the headlines. M&A is accelerating, suppliers keep pushing price increases, single-family demand is soft, and earnings pressure is real for the distributors most exposed to new construction.

Read past the headlines, and the operational picture is what matters. Acquisition fatigue is pushing good people into the market. Margin pressure is changing the kind of commercial talent companies want. Soft demand is reshaping where they are willing to add headcount at all. That is the context. The rest of this is what we see happening because of it.

By the NumbersThree Numbers We Keep Coming Back To

8 in 10

Firms still cannot fill their salaried roles. The shortage did not go away. It compounded.

Low Single Digits

Where wage growth has settled, down hard from the double-digit swings of 2024.

10 Days

The decision window strong candidates now expect. That is our number, from our searches.

Candidate IntelligenceCandidates Are Not Chasing Jobs. They Are Escaping Problems.

This is the single most important pattern we are seeing on the candidate side, and the one most companies are still missing in how they position their roles.

Most mid-level and senior candidates we speak with right now are not looking for an upgrade. They are leaving a specific problem behind. Ask the right follow-up questions and the same answers come back, repeatedly.

Benefits are shrinking. Health-plan changes, retirement contribution cuts, PTO compression. Small individually, additive over time.
More responsibility, no upside. Scope expanded over the last 18 months. Comp, title, and authority did not follow.
No clear growth path. A ceiling that became visible. The person above them is not leaving, and the role above does not exist yet.
Acquisition fatigue. The third reorg in two years. New ownership, new leadership, new metrics. The job they took is no longer the job they have.
Leadership turnover. The person they joined for is gone, and the culture they came for left with them.
Culture shifts. The pace, the priorities, the way decisions get made changed. They did not.
Do-more-with-less burnout. Headcount cut without changing the process. Same work, fewer people, longer hours.
Stability concerns. Soft division performance. Layoffs at peers. Quiet signals from the top. They are getting out before they have to.

When a candidate says they are open to a move, we do not take it at face value. We dig until we find the real reason they are having the conversation at all. That answer tells you everything about their commitment and what is driving them.

The implication for hiring companies is direct. If your opportunity does not visibly solve the specific problem the candidate is escaping, compensation alone will not bring them across the line.

Candidates running from acquisition fatigue need to see leadership stability before they see a base number. Candidates absorbing scope creep need role definition before they weigh variable comp. Candidates burned out on do-more-with-less need to see real operational investment before they trust the growth story. Solve the actual problem first. Then have the compensation conversation.

Client IntelligenceCompanies Are Not Panic-Hiring. The Name-Your-Number Era Is Over.

On the company side, the urgency that produced inflated offers and compressed timelines over the last two years has cooled. Companies are moving with more deliberation, asking harder questions about long-term fit, cultural alignment, and what a candidate will build before stretching the comp envelope.

That is not bad news for candidates. It is a healthier process. It requires a recalibration of expectations set in a fundamentally different cycle.

The compensation conversation is still happening. It is just different. Strong talent is still being paid strong numbers. The days of companies bidding wildly against each other for every qualified person are leveling out, but decisive, realistic, genuinely aligned candidates are still closing offers in line with current market data.

Where things stall is the candidate who walked in expecting a 25-to-30 percent jump because that is what the market allowed 18 months ago. Companies are no longer rushing to meet that. They are taking a much harder look at value, fit, stability, and impact first.

The Bigger PictureThe Talent Paradox: Slower Hiring, Same Shortage

Here is what makes this market unusual. Hiring has slowed, but the underlying talent shortage has not. It has compounded. Roughly eight in ten firms still report difficulty filling salaried roles, and the industry needs hundreds of thousands of net new workers over the next two years. The math did not get easier. It got harder.

At the same time, building materials is staring down a decade-in-the-making wave of retirements. The institutional-knowledge layer, the people who know the customers, the regional dynamics, and the supplier relationships, is starting to step out. Companies that never built an internal development pipeline are about to feel that gap acutely.

This is not the candidate’s market people think it still is. It is not a buyer’s market either. It is a precision market.

The companies that hire well will outperform. The ones that wait it out will fall behind on bench depth. They cannot rebuild in a recovery.

What’s WorkingThe Companies Winning Right Now Share a Profile

Across the searches we have closed in the last 90 days, a consistent pattern shows up at the companies landing the candidates everyone else is chasing. It is not about being the biggest, best-known, or highest-paying. It is five things, applied consistently.

01Clear expectations

Communicated early, repeated in the offer, documented in writing. The candidate knows exactly what they are walking into.

02Strong, stable leadership

The candidate meets leadership, finds it credible, and sees it staying. Stability is now a closing tool.

03A real opportunity

Not language about growth. A defined path, timeline, and next role. Specific beats inspirational.

04Consistency

How the company shows up in the first conversation matches the fifth. No bait-and-switch on scope, comp, reporting line, or culture.

05Active investment in the existing team

The candidate sees a company investing in the people already there. That signals the offer they get today will still be true in two years.

People want a reason to stay before they need a reason to leave. The companies that understand this are the same ones still attracting the candidates everyone else is also trying to reach.

Action ItemsWhat This Means for You

If You Are a Candidate

The companies worth joining are still hiring. They are more selective, not closed.
Be able to articulate precisely what problem you are leaving. Vague answers stall.
Recalibrate to current market data, not the 2022 peak. Decisive and realistic candidates land the role. Inflated and tentative ones stall.
Lead with what this role solves for you, not just what you bring to it.
If your current employer is the problem, decide whether you are leaving or negotiating. Going to market to extract a counteroffer is the fastest way to burn your reputation.

If You Are a Client

Compensation will not save a process that has not built real conviction in the candidate.
Lead with leadership stability, role clarity, and growth path. Comp confirms the offer. It does not open the conversation.
Move with urgency. A 10-day decision window is now the standard, not the exception.
Treat the candidate’s reason for leaving as a hiring signal, not a credential check. If you cannot solve their problem, the offer will not land, regardless of the number.
Invest in the team you already have. Retention is now a hiring strategy. People stay when they have a reason to, not when they cannot find an exit.

Closing ThoughtWhat to Take Into June

The market may be tougher. In many ways it is becoming healthier. Great candidates are still getting hired. Strong companies are still growing. The businesses that communicate clearly, move with urgency, and stay intentional are the ones winning.

The strongest hires of the next 12 months will happen at companies that lead with clarity, move with conviction, and treat hiring as a strategic function rather than a transactional one. The candidates who land the best offers will be the ones who can say exactly why they are moving and what they want next, without hedging.

If you have an open search, a stalled offer, or a key seat you are about to backfill, the hiring conversation in building materials is different from what it was 12 months ago. Our market intelligence covers compensation, candidate availability, and the real reasons people are moving across LBM, distribution, manufacturing, and private equity.

Let’s Talk →

The SnapDragon Standard

We don’t send offers hoping they work. We send offers knowing how they will land.