Why Billion Dollar Contractors Keep Hiring From Outside (And What It Means For You)

I keep seeing multibillion-dollar contractors post openings for VP, Project Executive, and even COO roles, and it makes me wonder the same thing every time. These companies already have thousands of employees underneath those seats. Why aren't more of those people being developed into the next leader instead of the company going outside again and again?

When I posted this question, the responses backed up exactly what I have seen with my personal firsthand experience before starting Pro-Accel working inside companies with $ 100 MM to 1.5 billion in annual revenue. Some of it is timing. Growing faster than your leadership bench creates real gaps that take years to close internally. Some of it is that promotion is not an exact science, and a high performer who never gets a clear answer on when their next step is coming will eventually go find that clarity somewhere else.

But the deeper issue is something a lot of these large companies do not want to admit. The bigger the company gets, the more C and D team players it accumulates, and the fewer A players it holds onto. A-players want control over their career. They want to be known, not buried inside a company where they’re 1 of 75 project managers. So they leave for smaller, growing contractors where their name still means something.

This is exactly why the next few years matter so much if you are running a contractor under $100 million. You are sitting in the spot where the best people actually want to be. I have worked at every size company, and I can tell you the A players are far more concentrated at the $50 MM to $400 million level than they ever are at 1.5 billion. Truly talented people do not want to get stuck in a massive company unless they are the rare person who avoids risk and movement altogether, and those people are few and far between.

But having access to that talent means nothing if you are not ready to develop it. Hiring cannot be a single 1-hour conversation where you expect someone fully formed to walk through the door. Nobody comes out of school already skilled. It is on you as the owner to take someone from wherever they are today and build them into who you need them to be tomorrow. Stop expecting to buy finished leaders. Start building them.

So what does that actually look like in practice? It starts with a real onboarding process, not a quick walkthrough of the office and a login account. Set a probation period with clear outcomes tied to the exact things that person said they could do in the interview. Then build a scorecard. Every well-run organization has some version of one because people need to know where they stand and what the next level actually requires. That's what people end up fighting for.

Look at the military. Nobody gets promoted there without going through specific assessments that can take weeks, months, sometimes years to complete. Now, I'm not saying you need to run your company like boot camp, and I promise I'm not trying to turn your project managers into soldiers. But running a job site and managing a crew takes a real amount of discipline, and there are a few things worth borrowing from the process that built the greatest military in the world. Clear standards, real assessments, and a defined path to the next level. That's not overkill. That's just structure.

If you are sitting on a bench of good people and still catching yourself hiring from outside, hit reply and tell me what's holding you back from developing them instead. I read every response.

Gerard Aliberti
Pro-Accel, Owner

EXCITING NEWS

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Ways We Can Work Together

Role-Specific Employee Performance Training — Pro-Accel offers role-specific training workshops for Estimators, PMs, Superintendents, and Field Engineers focused on accountability, decision-making, and ownership. Reply if you want to talk about your team.

Fractional COO - I provide Fractional COO services for contractors who need stronger operational leadership but are not ready to make a $350,000 executive hire. I step into the role now, help get the COO work done, and build the systems, responsibilities, and expectations around the position. When the time comes to hire your full time COO, you will know exactly what you need, at a fraction of the upfront cost.

Bid Handoff Accelerator Process — A structured handoff system that closes the gap between estimating and field execution, dramatically improving project success.

Strategic Advisory — From organizational assessments to strategic planning and leadership development, we dig into how your business actually operates, identify where the breakdowns are happening, and build the systems and structure that drive real growth