Your careers page is already recruiting

Engineering firms are short of people, and the shortage is mid-career. In the ACEC Research Institute's survey of 583 executives for the second quarter of 2026, 33 percent of firms said they had turned down work in the previous six months because of staffing shortages. That was down from 51 percent at the end of 2024, and 64 percent expected hiring to increase over the next 12 months (BDC).

Zweig Group's 2025 recruitment report found that 83 percent of firms name professionals with 3 to 10 years of experience as their greatest staffing need, and 67 percent use external recruiters (Zweig Group). Nationally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 22,700 openings a year for civil engineers and 6 percent job growth from 2025 to 2035 (BLS).

Colorado is a crowded place to hire. The state had 3,898 engineering services establishments and 46,685 jobs in 2025, about 2.1 times the national concentration, at an average pay of $138,887 (BLS QCEW). That federal category also counts aerospace and defense engineering contractors, so the consulting market is smaller than those figures suggest. Even so, an engineer on the Front Range has plenty of employers to compare.

What we know and what we don't

We looked for research on how many engineers visit a firm's website before applying and found nothing we would quote. The closest evidence is about what candidates weigh. In Hinge's 2020 employer branding study of 1,034 recruiters and job seekers across professional services, 57 percent of job seekers rated culture as important as pay, and 75 percent of recruiters said cultural fit outweighed work history (Hinge).

A careers page is where a firm can back up what it says about its culture with photos and names. Anyone who does visit forms a view from what's there, whether or not your team has touched the page this year.

What we saw on Colorado firm sites

In our October 2026 survey of 35 Colorado engineering firm websites, 34 had a careers page. Several firms put hiring in the homepage hero, as a carousel slide or a hiring bar. Fifteen of the 35 mention employee ownership somewhere on the site, more often than any trust claim except the firm's age, and six show a workplace award such as Top Workplaces or a Fortune list. The one firm without a careers page has a large field workforce.

Our survey studied homepages closely and careers pages only in passing. We recorded whether each firm had one and noted some of what they said. Our overall impression, which we didn't score line by line, is that careers pages are thin: they confirm the firm is hiring and give a candidate little to compare it with the next firm.

What we'd put on the page

The suggestions below are our judgment, shaped by the data above. They're aimed at engineers with 3 to 10 years of experience, since that's who most firms say they can't find.

• Explain how you support engineers working toward the PE. Engineers usually reach that exam after passing the FE and working for several years (BLS), which puts many of them in the 3-to-10-year group. Say which exam costs you cover and whether there's a raise or bonus when someone passes.
• Introduce the person who would lead the candidate's group, and someone who joined a few years ago and now runs projects. A candidate can look both of them up.
• Use photos of your own staff on your own projects. Engineers can tell when the safety gear in a stock photo is wrong.
• If you're employee-owned, explain in plain terms when a new hire becomes eligible and how it works.
• Write benefits and flexibility as policy, with numbers wherever you have them.
• List current openings, each with its office and the experience level you want.
• If you show a workplace award, say what it measured. Zweig's Best Firms To Work For, for example, combines an anonymous employee survey with a survey of company policies (Zweig Group).

One test you can run today: read your careers page as a project engineer with six years at another Colorado firm would, and count the facts on it that they couldn't find on a competitor's page. If the count is low, the license path and the names are the quickest places to start.