An owner’s job offer before the project is finished can collide with a no-hire clause in the owner-contractor agreement. The clause binds the owner, not you, but it shapes whether and when the owner can hire you. Your own employment agreement may restrict you separately. Finish the job, negotiate off the jobsite, and take legal advice.

The OAC meeting runs long, as it always does. As the architect packs up, the developer’s development manager asks whether you have time for lunch, and somewhere between ordering and the check comes the offer: run the owner’s next three multifamily buildings in Dallas as its construction manager, starting as soon as you can. You have 9 months left on this building. Being asked is a compliment you earned in those meetings. What neither of you has read is the owner-contractor agreement, and if it carries a no-hire clause, a contract you never signed already has an opinion about your answer.

What does a no-hire clause in an owner-contractor agreement say?

A no-hire clause is a promise, usually by the owner, not to hire or solicit the contractor’s employees who worked on the project for a stated period, often running past final completion. Some versions add a liquidated amount the owner agrees to pay the contractor if it hires anyway.

The wording matters more than the label. The versions that turn up in owner-contractor agreements tend to fall into a few shapes:

  • A non-solicitation clause. The owner may not approach the contractor’s people. A version this narrow may not stop the owner hiring someone who applies on their own, depending on the drafting.
  • A no-hire clause. The owner may not employ them at all, whoever made the first move.
  • A liquidated amount. A sum fixed in advance that the owner pays if it hires anyway, which turns the restriction into a price.
  • A mutual version. The contractor makes the same promise about the owner’s staff.

Most project managers and superintendents never see the executed agreement in full, which is why the clause tends to surface at the worst moment: after the lunch.

DocumentWho signed itWho it restrainsWhat it can stop
Owner-contractor no-hire clauseOwner and contractorThe owner, sometimes bothThe owner hiring you for a set period
Your client non-solicitYou and your employerYouWorking for or soliciting your employer’s clients
Your non-competeYou and your employerYouWorking for a competitor in a defined area
Key personnel clauseOwner and contractorThe contractorRemoving you from the project without consent

Does the no-hire clause bind you or the owner?

The no-hire clause binds the parties who signed it: the owner, and the contractor if the promise is mutual. You did not sign it, so it cannot stop you accepting. It can stop the owner offering, or make the owner wait, ask your employer for a release, or pay.

An owner whose counsel spots the clause will often go quiet, push the start date out, or ask you to wait until closeout. None of it is about you. An owner building student housing, where the move-in date never moves, has its own reason to want you to finish first. Take a worked illustration with assumed figures: you have 9 months left to completion, and the clause runs 12 months past completion. If the owner honors it, the earliest clean start is 21 months away, which is longer than most development managers are willing to hold a seat open.

How long an owner waits under an assumed clause Bar chart, How long an owner waits under an assumed clause: Left on the job 9 months, Clause tail after completion 12 months, Earliest clean start 21 months. How long an owner waits under an assumed clause With 9 months left and an assumed 12-month tail, an owner that honors the clause waits 21 months tohire you. 0 months 12 months 25 months 38 months 50 months Left on the job 9 months Clause tail after completion 12 months Earliest clean start 21 months Source: Worked illustration in this section, assumed figures
With 9 months left and an assumed 12-month tail, an owner that honors the clause waits 21 months to hire you.

The market is not short of movement. The construction quits rate was 2.2 percent in August 2026 (preliminary, seasonally adjusted), and construction employment stood at 8,364,000 in September 2026. People leave contractors every month. Moving to the owner who is paying your employer is the one move that someone else’s contract may already have priced.

What your own employment agreement says about the owner

Your own agreement is the document that can restrict you directly, and the owner is your employer’s client. A client non-solicitation clause, or a no-service clause, can reach exactly this move. The construction agreement note covers what those clauses usually contain, and the non-compete guide covers how to read one before signing. The point here is narrower: reread yours with this owner’s name in mind.

State law decides how far those clauses reach. In Florida, the restrictive covenant statute requires a signed writing and lists substantial relationships with specific existing clients as a legitimate business interest. It presumes a post-employment restraint of 6 months or less reasonable, and one of more than 2 years unreasonable. For a superintendent in Tampa, the client language comes first. North Carolina requires a writing, signed by the person restrained, before a covenant limiting the right to do business there is enforceable, which matters to a project manager in Charlotte asked to sign something new on the way out. California sits at the other end: the Attorney General has reminded employers that noncompete agreements are not enforceable under section 16600 of the Business and Professions Code, and since January 1, 2024 it has been illegal there to enter into or attempt to enforce one. Your paper answers to state law. The owner’s paper answers to something larger.

A no-hire clause inside a genuine construction contract is generally judged as a restraint attached to that deal, not as a naked no-poach pact. Federal agencies treat naked agreements between employers not to hire each other’s staff as potential crimes, so owners’ counsel draft these clauses carefully.

The 2016 HR guidance from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission called naked no-poaching agreements per se illegal, meaning illegal when separate from, or not reasonably necessary to, a larger legitimate collaboration, and the FTC’s 2016 announcement said the DOJ would proceed criminally against them. The agencies replaced that guidance on January 16, 2025 with joint guidelines. The guidelines text says companies can compete for workers even while they collaborate, and that a restraint subordinate to a broader collaboration and reasonably necessary to it may need a fuller analysis. It states it has no force of law.

Owners and contractors do hire from the same pool. BLS counts 380,360 construction managers across all industries in May 2025, at a mean of $124,360, and 812,210 trade supervisors, the occupation that holds most superintendents, at a mean of $86,450. Those all-industry figures cover every level, not what a senior seat pays. The Handbook counts 609,100 construction manager jobs in 2025, self-employed included. California’s Attorney General goes further than the federal text: its 2024 consumer alert lists statements from a prospective employer that it cannot hire from your current employer as a sign of a no-poach agreement.

How should you handle an owner’s job offer mid-project?

Finish the job. Keep the conversation off the jobsite and off project time. Ask the owner in writing whether its contract restricts hiring you, read your own covenants with an attorney, and choose when to tell your employer before someone else does.

Most of the risk sits in conduct. All of it is in your hands:

  • Do not negotiate on site. Not in the trailer, not on project email, not on the company phone.
  • Carry no information across. Buyout numbers, change-order positions and claim strategy belong to your employer, and an owner who wants them is showing you how it negotiates.
  • Ask the clause question early. One sentence to the development manager: does your agreement with my employer restrict hiring its staff?
  • Check whether you are named. If the contract lists you as key personnel, leaving is a contract event, not only a resignation.
  • Plan the handover before the notice. A clean mid-project resignation is what keeps the reference intact.

Telling your employer is a timing decision. Outside discrimination, whistleblower and similar protections, the Department of Labor notes that a termination is subject only to any private contract between employer and employee. Tell them early, and you can lose the current job before the new one exists. Tell them late, after the owner has asked for a release, and you can lose the relationship instead. Sometimes the cleanest route is the owner asking your employer for that release, timed to substantial completion. Whether the seat is worth the move at all is a separate question, and the owner’s side covers what the work becomes.

When the no-hire clause is not your problem

The clause is not your problem when the project has closed out and any stated period has run, or when the agreement has no such clause, which only the executed contract can confirm. It is also less likely to apply when the person offering works for a separate company, such as the owner’s representative firm, unless the clause defines the owner to include its affiliates and consultants. And it does not decide whether the job is a good one. That part was always yours.

Back to the lunch

The development manager meant the offer, and the clause does not make it less real. It changes the order of operations: read the paper, then talk, then decide. Take the owner-contractor clause, your own agreement and the written offer to your own employment attorney before you sign anything. Selah Talent Partners is a search firm and not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. Selah Talent Partners works with candidates through the candidates page on confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, and a candidate never pays for that conversation. You are allowed to finish the building you were hired to finish, and only then decide which side of the table you want to sit on.

Sources and further reading