United States

We do not recruit across the economy and we turn down work outside these six fields. That is a capacity decision. We run a limited number of searches at a time, and the list is short so that each one can be run properly.

Robotics and mechatronics. Vice presidents of engineering and technical directors, from the design of a robotic work cell down to the embedded electronics that move it.

Automation and control. Plant managers, automation directors and heads of controls engineering. The people who answer for the PLCs, the SCADA layer and the uptime number.

Industrial processes. Plant managers, construction directors and superintendents, from mining and metals through chemicals and materials.

Defense and aerospace. Program, engineering and production directors, frequently in cleared environments where schedule and traceability are the job. For roles of this kind, US law and your own facility requirements decide who is eligible to be considered, long before anyone discusses merit. We establish those conditions with you at the start of a search rather than at the offer, because a list built without them is not a list.

Energy efficiency and power grids. Vice presidents, project directors and principals inside engineering consultancies, on the retrofit side and on the transmission side.

Data centers and critical infrastructure. Construction directors, mechanical and electrical leads, and commissioning directors, for facilities that cannot be tested on the customer.

Every discipline on that list has a trap in it, and the traps decide whether a search lands.

In robotics and automation, the integrator and the end user are two different careers that read identically on a resume. Fifteen years at a systems integrator means specifying, selling and commissioning cells for fifty plants without ever owning a production number. Ten years on the end-user side means owning every number on the board for three cells. Both are credible people. Hiring the wrong one for your problem costs a year to find out.

In controls, the question is almost never whether a candidate knows automation. It is whether they know yours. One platform inside one architecture is not the same experience as carrying a plant through a migration with production running the whole time, and the people who could settle that with numbers cannot, because the uptime data belongs to their employer. So we do not ask for the numbers. We ask how the decisions were made and reconstruct the judgment from there.

In process industries, the calendar belongs to the plant. Nobody resigns six weeks before a turnaround and nobody arrives in the middle of one. Shutdown seasons set the only windows these moves happen in, which means a process search that starts the day the seat empties is already late. These plants also sit in small towns, where the decision gets made by a family and not by a candidate, so relocation is a first conversation rather than a last one.

In defense and aerospace, the strongest candidates cannot tell you what they did. The interview has to read judgment without program detail, and eligibility has to be settled before the list is built.

In energy, half the market is not salaried. A consulting engineer on a partner track is weighing equity, a client book and a name on a door, and an approach that opens with a compensation number ends the conversation in ninety seconds. Approaches like that take months and are made one at a time. It is part of why we take a small number of searches.

In critical facilities, commissioning is staffed against an energization date, not a budget year. Give us the date before you give us the title.

A search that crosses a border carries questions a domestic one does not, and vague answers to them cost money in month three. These are the four that have to be settled in writing before a search opens, rather than discovered inside it.

Who legally employs the person once hired, and on whose payroll.

Which entity signs the agreement with you, how you are invoiced, and in which currency.

What immigration status or clearance eligibility the role requires, which in defense and aerospace is frequently decisive and is a matter of law rather than preference.

How the replacement guarantee applies to a placement made on the other side of the border. Our standing term is a six-month replacement guarantee, and the exact terms of any engagement, that one included, are put in writing before work begins.

We do not answer those four on a web page, because the answers depend on how you are structured and on what the role is. We answer them for your engagement, in writing, before the first candidate is called. If one of them cannot be settled to your satisfaction, you should not hire us for that search, and we would tell you so ourselves.

We do not publish fees. They are set against the search and put in writing before any work begins.

Three situations.

You run a Quebec or Ontario manufacturer with a plant, a project or a team on the American side, and you need someone who can hire on one side and report on the other, in two languages. This is the most natural version of the work and the reason this page exists in French as well as English.

You are an American company in this corridor, hiring a technical leader in one of the six fields, and you want the Canadian half of the labor market worked properly instead of skipped.

You are hiring for a role where the qualified population is small, known and already employed. If forty credible people would answer a posting, you do not need us, and we will say so.

Our constraint is delivery capacity, not lead volume. We take what we can run properly and decline the rest, and if we are the wrong firm for a search you will hear it in the first conversation rather than in month three.

The useful first conversation is about one specific role: the site, the discipline, the level, what the last person did well and where they fell short, and what you have already tried. It happens in English or in French, and Éric Larouche takes it.