Aaron Ruble
Performance Contracting Incorporated
“I got to start something from scratch, get to pick the ATS, get to train the managers on it and how it all works.”
Aaron Ruble has been named to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, the annual award recognizing the 100 most exceptional leaders and practitioners in talent acquisition. Honorees are selected by the Talent 100 committee from thousands of nominations and candidates across the industry, chosen for the impact of their work, the depth of their craft, and their influence on the future of recruiting. This is Aaron's story.
Aaron Ruble's path into recruiting started with a friend's referral to Aerotek in San Antonio, launching a career that would span engineering staffing, power generation recruiting, entrepreneurship, and corporate talent acquisition.
A couple of years out of college, Ruble moved to San Antonio for family reasons. A friend working on the IT side at Aerotek heard about an opening on the engineering and construction team, and the timing was right: Ruble interviewed, got the job, and went through the company's training program. He stayed three years, traveling to help open new offices in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston. He loved the company, and the friendships he made there last to this day.
Then another family reason pulled him back to Kansas City: his girlfriend, who would become his wife. Aerotek didn't have openings in their Kansas City branch, so Ruble pivoted into sales in the power industry, visiting power plants and utilities across a four-state territory and learning an industry he knew little about. Four to five years later he returned to recruiting, this time with the power world as his specialty: generation, transmission, distribution lines, substations.
Building Something of His Own
Eventually Ruble launched his own company, AR Group, and ran it for about six years. It was a mom and pop shop by design. Most of the recruiters worked on 100 percent commission, friends and a couple of family members who recruited when they could. The client list, though, punched well above the firm's size: Black & Veatch, Burns & McDonnell, and Kiewit. AR Group was never terribly large, but with those few big companies there were enough openings to sustain the business, and for six years things went well.
The trouble came from the back end. Ruble and his team had tried to handle taxes on their own rather than hiring outside help, and they had treated taxes for other states the same way they treated Kansas and Missouri, which they weren't. Fines and penalties for interest and late payments piled up until the company didn't have the money to resolve it. AR Group dissolved.
Back Into the Corporate World
Ruble went back into what he calls the real world and landed a job in talent acquisition with Black & Veatch, which he loved. From there came the chance to become director of talent acquisition for Kenny Construction, a company out of Chicago, and it remains one of his favorite jobs. "I got to start something from scratch, get to pick the ATS, get to train the managers on it and how it all works," he says. Building the function and teaching the business how to use it was, in his telling, deeply rewarding.
Kenny was later bought out by Granite, a large California-based firm that does power, civil, and transportation work, and Granite's policy was no remote work. That left Ruble with a choice: move to Chicago or start looking elsewhere. Since then, he has stayed mostly on the construction side of the industry.
Finding Home at PCI
Today Ruble works for Performance Contracting Incorporated, or PCI, headquartered in Lenexa, Kansas, the city where he lives. The company operates 56 offices and did about three billion dollars in revenue last year, with a goal of five billion by the end of 2027. PCI specializes in commercial interior work: drywall, framing, acoustical ceilings, flooring, insulation, anything that goes on the inside of a commercial project, on jobs ranging from universities to hospitals to office buildings.
PCI is employee-owned, and the culture, Ruble says, is phenomenal. The talent acquisition division is relatively new, roughly two years old, and has already grown to seven people. For a long time every placement at PCI came through an agency; the company got tired of paying the fees and realized it could save money by bringing recruiting in-house. Ruble was the fourth TA hire, and two more have joined since.
The team is incredibly busy. Ruble currently has about 40 openings for estimators across the country, and PCI is hiring to help carry the workload. "It's one of the greatest companies I've got to work for or been associated with," he says. He hopes to retire there.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Aaron. We are honored to welcome Aaron Ruble to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Aaron. Welcome to the Talent 100.
About the Talent 100
The Talent 100 is an annual list spotlighting the leaders who push HR and talent acquisition forward, organized by Noon AI. Honorees are selected through peer nominations and independent selection committees. Selection is entirely merit-based, with no fees or pay-to-play requirements.
