Work-life balance: a sine curve, not a scale

I just took a week off from work. I almost made it the whole week without checking my email, but I caved on day 5 when I realized I had 200 emails in my inbox. Fortunately, a fair amount of them were things like "there are cookies in the break room" and "the copier is up/down/depressed/homocidal". I was able to handle anything that truly needed my attention easily with email, and everything else appeared to be well in hand, thanks to the great interns that work on my team.

This week off is part of my summer-of-scaling-back, which was preceded by the months of October 2012-May 2013 being fast and furious (sans Vin Diesel) with deadlines and workload. It was during that time that I remember a phenomenon that is arguably particular to architecture. It's the phenomenon of our work-life balance. The general world of white-collar work gives us this image of work-life balance as if it were scales, like the sign for the zodiac sign of Libra: always in perfect balance and harmony. We're told that every day is balance: some work, some play, some chores, some sleep.



But the truth, especially for architects, is more complex: it's more like a sine wave. There are times where the work calls for more of your effort, time, and attention. There are times where your health calls for the most attention. Sometimes it's your partner or spouse. Sometimes it's your parents. Sometimes it's your hobby or side business. Life's demands ebb and flow depending on what's going on, and the illusion that everything is always only demanding X or Y is a myth. The sine wave shows this a lot better than the scales: above the X axis is work and professional demands, below the X axis is personal demands.

After my major deadlines passed in May, I pulled my boss aside and let him know I needed some rest this summer, and he concurred and has been supporting me in that. The project and the team are in a place where I can do this, and even better, they can get rest too. (I wasn't the only one who was worn out.) So I'm planning some vacations and time off this summer with my husband to make up for answering work email on our anniversary trip in February.

Accepting the ebb and flow is a lot easier than constantly struggling to make things balance every single day, and it's a lot more realistic. Allowing yourself to deal with demands and deadlines by month Or week instead of by day takes some pressure off. But do remember: it's up to you to say when the sine wave has gone too far for too long in one direction.

Of Millennials and mentorship

A recent online article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek related the differences in mentoring the Millennial generation. The article stated some familiar yawn-inducing ground (the younger generation uses multiple mentors to get ahead instead of sticking with one main person with whom to connect) and brought up some new problems for the mentor-mentee relationship (the mentee is better at certain tasks, especially those pertaining to technology, than the mentor, and all the mentor's clients want to work with the mentee instead). It was a decent article, to be fair, but like many articles about generational differences, it makes me want to barf in my recycling bin.

When I discussed mentoring interns at the 2010 and 2011 national AIA conventions, one of the primary points of my presentation is that, while generation can affect a person's behavior more than race or gender, it is one's humanity that affects one most of all. Mentors in this article who felt irritated by a mentee's behavior in a meeting or calling or texting them late at night regarding routine questions seemed to  be complaining that it was the mentee's youth that made this a problem.  I dare say the root of the problem is a basic one that plagues even my colleagues from my same generation (Gen X, to be precise): not everyone was raised at your house.  I've had interns look bored and text their friends in meetings with consultants, and I've had other interns sit in those same kinds of meetings and take notes, ask questions, and contribute ideas. These interns all had similar levels of experience--the difference was the kind of person they were and the kind of intern--and architect--they wanted to be.

To me, it makes absolute sense for an intern--and in fact anyone regardless of age--to have more than one mentor in one's career.  If an intern was thinking about changing jobs, I might not be the best person to talk to about that, since I've only worked at one firm for 13 years. However, if an intern had an ethical situation to deal with, I might be just the right person. Further, in a work world that is increasingly about who you know, then it makes sense to just know more people. Putting all your eggs in one mentorship basket is a pretty risky bet.

Overall, it sounds to me like Millennials are embracing a changing work world while older workers (including many Gen Xers) are not, and there's a little bitterness there, perhaps being taken out on the Millennials as a bit of shooting the messenger.  However, there are still "old-school" habits and practices that still work in the workplace, like not bothering your coworkers on the weekends, paying attention in meetings, dressing professionally, and listening in a conversation instead of waiting for your turn to speak.  These are things that appeal not to Boomers or Xers or Millennials, but to humans.

Women in architecture: a global perspective

One of my readers recently hipped me to Parlour, an interesting blog/website regarding women in architecture. Parlour's articles and discussions are the best kinds of posts in that they are relevant to all culture, not just women.  I especially enjoyed one sociologist's post of why women leave architecture with a tied-in critique of Architect Barbie. Preliminary evidence in the sociologist's study revealed that women generally don't leave architecture to become stay-at-home moms but rather to take on another profession or to turn a hobby into a new job.


I find this relevant to both genders and all age ranges in architecture, but especially to our younger colleagues.  If we cannot rethink how our profession treats its future practitioners such that they can be suitably trained, challenged, and enriched, how can we foresee a future at all?  To be sure, some folks (of any age) leave architecture because they realize they aren't very good at it, but other leave to use their highly-coveted skills in another field altogether for a variety of reasons--more money, better hours, or perhaps more rewarding.  Preventing brain drain may not seem to be a real problem right now when the economy is bad and the market is flooded with qualified applicants, but it could be a major concern a year from now when things have improved.  After all, if all the good architects leave, who's left to run the profession?

Work versus school: Working long hours doubles depression risk

A recent study in the journal PLoS One indicated that people who work 11 or more hours a day are 2.4 times more likely to suffer from depression than those who work seven or eight hours a day.  (The survey is summarized here, and the original quote is here.)  One of the links takes readers to a Health.com article on ten careers with high rates of depression. The closest the article gets to architects is "artists, entertainers, and writers," but our profession didn't specifically make the list.  There is an urban legend that architects have the fifth highest suicide rate in the U.S., but there's no proof of that that I've been able to find.  (Although in a research project by Business Insider, urban planners supposedly had a higher-than-average suicide risk.)


What I took away from the PLoS One article is that the effect of long workdays wasn't as hard on people further up the food chain in a company. The inelegant but concise saying "shit flows downhill" explains this phenomenon, and it won't surprise interns who have been working long hours for an extended period of weeks or months. The researchers theorized that upper-level managers that work 11+ hour-long days have more control over their schedules, workloads, and tasksl.  Mid-level and lower-ranking workers have to do the work and tasks that their bosses hand them (i.e., shit flows downhill), so they work long hours on tasks over which they have no control.  


Lots of work + little to no control over your daily activities = depression.


Interns might greet the news of long workdays at a firm with a shrug: "What's the big deal? I'm already working a ton of hours in grad school," they might say.  But working 12-hour days in Studio is a different matter than spending 12-hour days in an office, doing plan details and cleaning up door and equipment schedules on a project that you might not get to see built.  The work you do in Studio is very directly yours and affects you instantly in every desk crit and review, but the work you do in an office can feel very divorced from you--it's for someone else, and you're no longer doing big sweeping design gestures but rather small weird details. Half the things you do in a firm will feel like the farthest thing from architecture.


In addition, your schedule sometimes isn't your own.  The client changes their mind right before a deadline, or your boss delays getting some information to the project team, or the contractor completes the SD pricing at the last minute and needs you to revise the entire exterior material to save money.  Guess who picks up the slack and fixes the drawing and stays late at night and on weekends?  The intern, natch.  Now and again, staying late and working overtime to save the day isn't so bad, and as the person who best knows how to use the drafting/modeling software, it's the intern's job to do this.  But if saving-the-day becomes the standard method of operation, a firm risks burning out its interns.  It will be up to the interns to set those boundaries early on in a firm (or as soon as they realize there's a problem) so that they won't be abused.


I got a letter from someone recently on this, and it will be the subject of an upcoming Lulu's Mailbag.  I also have some more fantastic Redlined Resumes coming, including one from a few interns with lots of experience.  In the meantime, keep your comments and questions coming.  This blog only works with your questions and input!

On the other side of burnout

I posted at the end of 2010 about burnout, which was rampant during the recession and I'm sure is still happening in many workplaces, regardless of their field (architecture, construction, dentistry, accounting, what have you).  America is slowly coming out of the recession, but the recovery is happening unevenly.  The firm for which I work, for example, has managed to score some decent-sized projects and has a few in the pipeline (some we're sure about, some we're not), so we've been able to hire some new help in the past year.  (Not all firms in Colorado, where I live, have been so lucky, and some are still struggling.)  Some of the people we hired had been laid off in 2008 and 2009, and some are new people that were laid off from other firms.  Having said that, we're still not hiring by leaps and bounds.  


Some of the hesitation is due to trepidation: we're not sure that these projects are all going to come through and therefore be able to support a bunch of new staff; and if we did hire all those people and come up short, we're going to have to lay people off again, which gives our firm a bad reputation in town and just feels mean.  There's also the ulterior motive of getting back to solvency--the Great Recession was/is a lot bigger than anyone thought, so many firms went through all their savings and have even taken out loans to stay afloat.  As the work comes back, firms are trying to restock the coffers and pay off the loans, which sometimes means keeping staff levels the same and making the existing staff work more.  Sadly, some firms are using the economy as a reason/excuse not to give raises or bonuses even though the firm is clearly very busy and productive.  This reeks of Grade A Bullshit to me, and firms that do this will have to watch their best talent bounce on out the door once the economy recovers a little more (in 3-9 more months).  Good luck with that.


My own burnout has improved since fall of 2010, when I originally posted on the topic.  Because of the lack of staff, I ended up managing the largest project of my life.  I was able to use that experience to negotiate for a better raise along with my promotion.  (I have 11 1/2 years experience, licensed for 5, but i you're an intern with more than three years' experience and you've been doing lots of work above your experience level and pay grade for the past 6-12 months--and you've been doing it well--then I encourage you to negotiate for a raise.)  My promotion also means I finally get help--that is, staff--to help me with getting drawings and research done.  And while I've probably been working about 45 hrs/week this month, I'm working on things I really like and enjoy (though the deadlines have been hellish).  Working on the things I enjoy (and am good at) and having help with my tasks have helped with my burnout, for sure.  


So I'm curious about my Intern 101 readers--how are your energy levels?  How are things going now in 2012?  Let me know in the comments or via email in the sidebar.  And as always, let me know of questions or topics you'd like to see covered here on Intern 101.  

Knowing your worth: the 2011 AIA Compensation Report

First of all, Happy New Year to all my readers.  I've received some good questions and post topics from some of you in the past month, and I hope to get those topics/questions posted on and answered in the next couple of months here.  


I wanted to kick the year off with a little something on the 2011 AIA Compensation Report, which was finally released for purchase in mid-December 2011.  It's available for purchase here for $249 if you're not a member and $195 if you are a member.  (A summary of the nationwide averages is here, if you're interested.)  As usual, I'm frustrated with AIA that the report is so ungodly expensive, especially for a document that is only available via emailed PDF.  By charging so much for the report, interns end up being excluded from having access to an arguably vital piece of information for our profession--the going rate for our specific experience level in our specific state or city.  


My husband and I bought it and split the cost, which I recommend all of you doing.  By doing so, we found out that my husband was on par with his colleagues and I was underpaid.  I used the information to bargain for (and receive) a good raise that put me level with others at my experience level in my geographical area.  This report could be worth having, especially if the cost is shared among a group of recent graduates or interns with little experience.  If you're looking to move to a different state or city, it's good to know what to ask for in those new locales and at your experience level.  (Regional reports are also available for $50 less than the full national report price, but I say spring for the whole shebang.)

So how many architects are unemployed in the U.S.?

An October 2010 online article from Architectural Record describes how using certain nationwide indicators of unemployment might preclude the proper reporting of unemployment for architects.  Just as illuminating as the article (if not more) are the comments by folks with 20+ years of experience in the profession.  Some of them are just jaded, but some are particularly sharp and solid in observation, such as two commentators with 45 years and 44 years of experience.  I know the article is a) a year old and b) a little dark for the season, but I know that not all firms are hiring right now, though a few are.  Things are slowly getting better, but it's going to take a while to get better in our profession.

A cold and a deadline? Why, you shouldn't have!

Folks, it’s been one of those weeks…well, one of those months, really.  Not only do I have a 100% CD deadline a week from today, I have a cold/flu/bubonic death funk to beat the band.  And here I was, all excited to get some Redlined Resumes done and posted.  No such luck.

I beg your pardon while I get through this deadline and illness simultaneously.  Meanwhile, I was sent a great website that provides basic references for architects.  ArchToolbox has all kinds of wonderful little bits on it—basic info on spacing sprinkler heads, this difference between all the cuts of lumber (plain, quarter, etc.), different types of locksets, and so on.  (Man, where was this website 11 years ago when I first started working? :-) )  While it’s not complete with every single thing you ever wanted to know about architecture, it can give you a good start on understanding many of the building blocks of design and construction (or in my case, a good refresher course!).

Lulu's Mailbag: following up on some comments

I've gotten some new readers recently who posted some good questions on old blog posts.  Being that they were good questions, and being that I'm about to go on vacation and am not feeling particularly motivated to say anything fresh or new, I thought it might be helpful to post responses to these questions.  First, a question from Anthony, on this post about whether or not to go to grad school:


I have a B.Arch already, is there any need to get an M.Arch besides 20% salary boost? Just curious for an outside and well experienced view. Especially from one that has an M.Arch. 


Good question.  The short answer is no, the M.Arch probably isn't worth your time in the eyes of an employer.  If you have a B.Arch, then you already have a professional degree--you'll be required to work for the same number of hours to complete IDP as someone with an M.Arch.  The longer answer is that more than just education gets you a boost in salary.  For example, you and Intern X might work at the same firm with the same amount of experience, but you make a dollar less an hour than Intern X because he has an M.Arch.  But let's say you get licensed a year before Intern X--you keep on top of your IDP hours, make sure you get them, and don't drag your feet when it comes to signing up for and taking the exams.  In general, bam, you get a raise over Intern X.  Let's say you then decide a year or so later that you're ready to move on and you change firms.  Again, in general, bam, you get another raise over Intern X.  Suddenly, you've closed the pay gap and passed Intern X without having to add another degree.  (Also, I think there's a rule against having more than one professional degree in architecture, unless you go from a B.Arch to a Ph.D. Arch.)  Bottom line: there's more than one way to increase your pay in architecture, and an M. Arch is only one of those ways.


Next question is from Drob26, who commented on a post about being underpaid.  When I mentioned that up until about three years of being out of school, interns are mostly interchangeable, Drob26 asked:


Why is it three years of experience? Is that because that's, normally, how long it takes to get licensed or finish the IDP?


Not at all.  Technically, it's supposed to take three years to complete the IDP if all goes according to plan, but it's more about experience.  After three years in a firm, it's highly likely that you've experienced all the phases of a project at least once (or at least have passing knowledge of the phases), know how to act professionally in a firm, and are skillful with multiple types of software.  Three years of experience has given you a chance to figure out where your skills lie--planning, CA, software, rendering, code research, etc.  Also, if you've spent all three of those years at the same firm, it means you have a great deal of firm understanding--you know what the standards are, what typical details the firm uses, how the firm's drawings look, and so on.  Having those skills makes you more valuable, especially when a lot of work needs to be done quickly in a short amount of time--you know what you're doing, and no one has to train you on the majority of typical tasks for the project.


Got a question you'd like to ask or a topic you'd like to see discussed here?  Drop me a line in the comments or via email in the sidebar.  Thanks!

Further thoughts on overtime: avoiding the extremes

This week, one of my colleagues became very ill and left work in the middle of the day due to an unbearable headache.  She could barely see, kept throwing up in the women's room, and couldn't stop crying from the pain.  One of our managers followed her to the hospital, where she learned she was having a compound migraine.  The physician on duty in the ED said that it was likely cause by a prolonged lack of rest--not just lack of sleep, but lack of rest.  No one was surprised, in a way--all of us who sat near this colleague knew she had been working a lot on her project, but it turns out that even with being out sick for nearly three days, she still managed to log 51 hours for the week.  Yeowch.


What I also find interesting about this incident is that the colleague in question is not an intern with a couple of years' worth of experience trying to prove herself, but rather a licensed architect with 12 or so years in the business.  But I knew her before she was licensed, and she did the same thing--worked and worked and worked until she nearly couldn't see straight, then accidentally hurt herself in some way, either by cutting her hand while fixing a sandwich or getting into an accident on her bike or in her car or something else along those lines.  My coworkers and I respect our colleague deeply and admire her work ethic and the quality of projects she puts out, but at what cost are these results happening?  Is it worth it?  We've suggested to her that she temper her work schedule a bit, but it seems to fall on deaf ears.


When it comes to working overtime, neither extreme is a good one.  If you never work overtime, especially when it's clearly available and needs to be done, you make it clear that work is really not that important to you--not the client, not your colleagues, not the project, nothing.  It will make your colleagues resentful and reluctant to work with you in the future ("Really? S/He can't come in for one weekend day or just stay late or come in early for a couple days this week?  Nothing over 40, really?").  It will also make advancement difficult if not impossible; no one is going to give you more responsibilities or more interesting or complicated work if you have shown that you're barely willing to do the smaller stuff you were given at first.  If doing the minimum at work is what you want, then have at it...but bear in mind that you'll be easy to get rid of if management needs to thin the ranks at some point.


But always working overtime is no better than working none at all really.  It's Bad, but it's a different flavor of Bad from never working overtime.  Sure, you prove yourself worthy of being kept on versus someone who never works overtime, but you run the risk of becoming one of these people (who, by the way, are all personalities that I've personally witnessed in the workplace):

• The Muck-Up: you work lots of overtime because you mess things up during the 8-to-5 and have to fix them.  You think your dedication to your job and the projects makes you look good--I'll fix my mistakes even if it takes all weekend, because I care!--but what it means is that you're not getting the training or support you need from your project manager and your more experienced colleagues.  Solution: check in with your colleagues and/or managers more often, perhaps even three or four times a day.  Getting regular input can stop a small misunderstanding from being a huge eff-up that robs you of a weekend.
• The Surfer: you work overtime because you waste time during the 8-to-5: chatting away with colleagues, surfing the internet (hence the moniker "Surfer"), taking long lunches, or constantly running personal errands during work hours.  (Note: while there's room for all of these activities in a workday and workweek to a point, the Surfer does them extensively and very regularly.)   You think your overtime makes you look dedicated, and even gives you a bit of the Martyr flavor (see below)--I just can't get it all done during the day, so I'll work overtime and look good!--but your colleagues know how much time you waste...and maybe you do too.  Solution: Really do a gut check about how much time you spend working, and/or how that time is spent.  I personally used to think that I could get work done while IM'ing my sister, but I realized that the constant interruption was keeping me from focusing.  Know that there is a season for everything--a time for checking out LOLCats, and a time for getting those plan details knocked out with some real attention.
• The Martyr: you work constantly and complain about how much you work and all the things you have to do, but you don't take the opportunity to solve the problem: get more staff, get your manager to take something off your to-do list, move the deadline out a little (occasionally, this can be done), and so on.  You work the overtime thinking that you're the only one that can do it and that everyone will notice--they'll see what they're doing to me when they look at my timesheet and my haggard expression and wrinkled workclothes!--but it often gets overlooked and frankly taken for granted.  Your boss only know that you're doing the work and it's getting done, but s/he has no idea about the self-flagellating monologue in your head.  Solution: ask for help--there's no way around it.  Your boss will take whatever you'll give him/her, and s/he only knows that you're giving too much when you speak up.  If you're giving too much week in and week out, show him/her what needs to be done and what would be the ideal solution (i.e., another person to help out for a week or two, more time, someone to check the drawings).  Failing that, take a weekend off or only work 40 hours a week now and then.  It's not going to kill you, and you'll probably be more productive when you've had a break.
• The Go-to Guy: you work overtime constantly because you've been willing and available to do so in the past, so your boss (or other bosses) put you in the position of having to work yet more overtime.  You work the overtime thinking that it makes you look like a keeper--Well, they know they can depend on me and I'm capable...and I can always use the money!--but it's likely that you agree to overtime because of fear.  You're afraid to turn down the work because you think you might get fired for saying no, so you say yes to anything and everything, and you become exhausted and run down...and burned out.  (I've seen the Go-to Guy and the Martyr most during the recession, by the way.)  Solution: I know it's hard, but say no once in a while.  Just like with The Martyr, your boss will take as much as s/he can get out of you, so it's up to you to set and maintain your boundaries with work and your energy.  This can be one of the hardest things to do, but holding a boundary, saying no once in a while, and refusing to let your boss make you feel guilty or frightened because of the occasional no is very empowering.  Also, it ultimately helps you save your energy so that everything you do is of high-quality...which is why they asked you to help in the first place!

Work is about more than showing up, Part 4: finally, being the part

I realize I've been harping a bit on this topic lately, but it's for good reason.  My firm has hired a large number of interns in the past six or eight months, some with several years of experience and some fresh or almost-fresh out of school.  And lo, I now watch them make some of the very mistakes that I was trying to fix when I started this blog two years ago.  Some of them make mistakes out of sheer enthusiasm--they're so excited to finally be working and even have a job in this economy, so they do too much or the wrong thing.  But strangely, I see some of them make mistakes out of sheer...what's a good word for it--mediocrity?  It's as if they do not fully understand the world into which they've stepped and perhaps hope to stay in for a long time.  But if they continue to do the things that they're doing now, they won't be.

At the aforementioned happy hour, a colleague of mine at another firm lamented about an upcoming deadline.  He was trying to find a polite way to ask his interns to work some overtime; he hated to ask people to give up their weekends, but due to the deadline that his boss had dropped on him, he couldn't see any other way of getting it done.  As he chatted with his interns, one of them piped up and said that she "would never offer to work overtime."  My friend facepalmed for a moment and said, "How can you be an architect and never work overtime, or even be able or willing to do it now and then?"

A longtime friend of mine visiting from Chicago snorted, "I have an intern fresh out of school, and he managed to set his own hours!  He's in 6:30am to 3:30pm, which would be fine if he had four years' experience.  He knows so little about what he's doing that he doesn't even know what he doesn't know, and I'm constantly having to fix or review or re-review the stuff he's messed up in the hour and a half before I get in.  And if I suddenly need help getting something put together before 5 because a client calls with some sort of emergency?  It's all on me.  I swear, sometimes it's like not having any help at all."

I try on this blog to be honest and optimistic at all times, because life is dark enough without having old and cranky people tell you how bad the world is.  Sometimes I lean more heavily towards optimistic because I know that whatever crappy thing I'm explaining is going to pass, such as this economy.  For now, I'm going to lean a little more towards honest, because some (though surely not all) of you may need this information for your present or future job.  And here is the honesty: we cannot just show up to architecture; we must be architects, and first, we must be interns.  This means doing the crappy work and the sometimes-unfulfilling work.  This means sometimes working late nights and weekends and through lunches.  This means scrambling for three deadlines in a week now and again.  This means being open to learning how to do something, and being open to learning more than one way to do anything and everything: ceiling plans, code studies, flashing details in a wall.  This means learning how to manage up, how to deal with odd or volatile or strange or moody bosses.

It means that the late nights and long hours don't disappear just because we have our degrees--we still have work to do and clients to satisfy and deadlines to meet.  Longtime readers of Intern 101 know that I'm repulsed when a firm has its interns constantly working 45+hour-weeks, because those hours mean that someone isn't managing the project--or perhaps the firm--very well and the interns are picking up the slack for that bad management or project planning.  But the other side of that coin is that every project--every project--will require some overtime here and there.  If nothing else, extra effort will be needed during the week or two before a major deadline, as everyone on the design team is making sure that all the details have been drawn and checked and everything is coordinated.  And because you a) are on the team, b) are good with the documentation software, and also c) need to learn this stuff, you will occasionally have to pitch in on a weekend or early morning or late evening.

It also means that we don't start out in this field making the rules and on our terms.  The less experience you have in architecture (or the worse your initial work experience was), the harder it is to face this fact: you don't know how much you don't know.  That fact has nothing to do with age and everything to do with experience.  (Remember: architecture pays you for your experience, not your education.  Your diploma is the cover charge that gets you into the nightclub of the architectural profession.)  Because you are still learning unbelievable amounts of information and concepts and problems and solutions, your managers and bosses will look over your shoulder more, want you to check in more often, want to review your work constantly, and yes, will want you in the office when they're in the office.  Why?  So you and they can correct for errors before the problem gets too far along, and so they can answer questions and not leave you in the lurch.  Again, there's wiggle room here and there, depending on the boss, project, firm, etc., but you will still for a while have to go along with certain rules while you're still learning.

If you want to be the boss and/or make your own rules and terms, which was point #2, then you're going to have to spend some time doing point #1, which is pitching in and going the extra mile while also learning and retaining that knowledge.  And that is the ultimate point of these four recent posts: it's not just about showing up but rather about being here.  That's kind of Zen, even for me, but it's the truth.  I have colleagues at my and other firms that complain about how poorly they feel they're being treated at work, but when I observe or ask questions about their performance, I'm not surprised that they feel like their companies don't care: they often behave as if they don't care about the work.  It's one thing to warm a desk for eight or nine hours a day, but it's another to engage in the work and the learning process and really get something out of it and grow even more from what you got out of it.  That, at the end of it all, is what I hope for all of you.

Work is about more than showing up, Part 3: acting the part

Some of my architecture friends and I met for happy hour recently, sharing our triumphs and tribulations.  (Note:  I shouldn't say "architecture friends" but rather just "friends"; most of my friends are architects.  Sad, I know.)  One of my friends, an architect I've known for seven years, was fretting/complaining about an intern on her project.  "He has four or five years' worth of experience and does good work, but sometimes it seems like it's pulling teeth to get him to to anything.  He waits for me to call him or see if he needs something else to do, and he acts like he can barely tolerate what he's working on.  I mean, we're doing a bank, and I know it's not the most exciting thing to do, but can he not act like it's leaching his soul?  Am I asking too much?"

Well...as usual, my answer is yes and no.

It's a lot of ask of anyone to sublimate all their emotions about everything at work and act like all is well and life is wonderful, like every project you work on is heaven and magic.  Not every project we work on is going to be what we like doing, nor is every task we do to our liking or using our strengths.  You're allowed not to be ecstatic at all hours of the workday--work should be fulfilling overall, but not 100% of the time--it just can't be.

At the same time, I think back to a reference letter written about and for me by my favorite undergrad studio professor.  A grad school that turned me down accidentally sent his letter to me, and among many nice things, he wrote: While Lulu is not the strongest designer, her energy and enthusiasm make her an integral part of any Studio.  Being 22 years old, I only focused on the "not the strongest designer" part.  Ouch times one million.  I shared the letter with my godfather, who also happened to be an interior designer.  "Lulu honey," he replied in his delightful Southern drawl, "that's a bigger compliment than you think."

"Projects in the work world go on for months or even years," he explained.  "Keeping a good attitude and enthusiasm and energy and a positive outlook can be hard on a project, and if you can do that, it makes a long project go a lot better.  And the people you work with want to work with you again, and they're more willing to go along when you need them to change lighting or move a deadline to a week earlier or whatever.  Good energy on a project touches a lot of folks."

It's that part of working on a project team, the energy part about which my godfather was speaking, that make me say to my friend: No, it's not too much to ask that someone not roll their eyes or sigh heavily or complain about the client every time you hand them some work to do or ask them to print this or research that on their behalf.  We architects and managers know that you don't always like what you're doing, and we know that doing SD renderings in SketchUp is way more fun than checking a door schedule in CDs.  But being able to greet those requests with a "sure, let me see what I can do" or a "no problem, consider it done!" makes all the difference on a long and arduous (or short, furious, and crappy) project.  And to be sure, I don't mean that you're delirious with joy to look up ADA clearances in a building's toilet rooms--that's not having a positive outlook but rather suffering from a dangerous mental condition.  Acting willing, ready, and able to take on any task or challenge, no matter how cruddy, tells your boss or project manager that you're on this team and at that firm for real.  You want to be there, and you want to be useful and productive.  If you want that, your manager can teach you Revit, CAD, building codes, whatever competencies you're missing in order to do your job better.  But if you don't want those things...good luck hanging onto your job when so many other interns--and some architects--are willing.

Lulu's Mailbag: Starting up and over as in intern

I received an email recently from an intern who graduated from architecture school just as the economy tanked.  The intern managed to find a position working in marketing at an architecture firm, in which she worked with project managers who were licensed architects and help them create project proposals and other marketing materials.  She wondered what would be the best way to transition from being the marketing person to being a project manager.  After all, it seemed as if the project managers don't do a lot of CAD or Revit now, mostly Microsoft Office and various graphics programs (though they all started out as drafters, CAD jockeys, and interns back in the day).  Since she had been working with them for three years, and she had joined them on so many walkthroughs of buildings and projects and had worked on so many of these presentations and proposals with them, she has a good idea of how to do a PM's job, right? So what's the best way to become a PM?


My response: become an intern first.


I'm pretty sure this isn't the response she wanted to hear, and I don't blame her a bit.  It's hard as hell to be told that all the architecturally-related stuff you've been doing for the past two to three years isn't enough to help you get the job you want, and now you basically have to start over as if you just got out of school yesterday.  But the truth is twofold: 1) there's a lot of very necessary skills and information to be learned by working on projects as an architectural intern; and 2) not everything you just did is a waste, both in terms of architectural and IDP experience.

Let's take the first point first.  If you are two to three years out of school and haven't been doing redlines or CAD/Revit or researching products or figuring out details or doing code reviews for projects, then no one is going to make you a project manager.  The reason that project managers don't do a lot of drawing and CAD work but rather do more directing, managing, and even marketing is because in general, they've spent a lot of time doing the code studies and CAD drawing and product and detail research already.  They've worked side by side with engineers (mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and civil to name a few) and followed multiple projects from early SD through to turnover to the owner, and they've learned a lot along the way.  These PMs now have years of experience understanding what it takes to put a building together, therefore they know what it takes to put a project together, and therefore they know what it takes to put a proposal for a project together.  PMs understand some aspects of marketing because they understand so much of what makes a project happen and how to make it happen.  And they learned first by doing.

Going from marketing (or a contractor's laborer or carpenter, or architectural product sales, or admin staff at an AIA office, or any related field) to a project manager position without first getting some good, solid experience as an intern/coordinator--doing redlines, research, code studies, flashing details, working with consultants to understand how the mechanical systems work in the building, etc.--is practically impossible without having serious repercussions for you and your firm.  Promoting you to a PM position without you having been an intern/designer first would put you in a position of having to walk around an existing building and look up at walls and ceilings and ducts and doors and so on without really knowing what you're looking at.  

That lack of construction knowledge would eventually show, and it would put your job/career and your firm in a bad position.  Furthermore, it would put you in a bad position with your colleagues: "Look at this green kid who went straight from marketing to being a project manager, never did a redline in his life.  What the hell does he know?  Whose nephew is he?"  Or worse (of which usually women are victims):  "Who did she [insert obscene activity here] to get that promotion?"  I've seen this happen, and it's ugly and demoralizing for everyone in the firm, regardless of the gender of the person, by the way.

I completely understand how what PMs do looks like just a bunch of marketing, and I thought the same thing in my first three or four years of working: "What the hell does s/he do anyway?  Crap, I could type all day on a Word document!"  However, the reason their job looks so easy is because they've done lots of hard work before this moment that makes all the right answers sit on the tips of their tongues.  The things they learned during their years as architectural designers and CAD monkeys makes those marketing and project walk decisions easy because they learned those answers the hard way.  The only way there is through.  You don't need an architecture degree or architectural experience to do marketing for an architectural firm (or be an architectural product/material rep, or work in the field with a contractor), but you do need it to be a project manager.

Now, let's address the second point, which has some good news.  As I've said here recently before, NCARB is changing the rules on IDP to allow for some less-than-traditional conduits for gaining credits in order to help the many interns whose employment paths and prospects have been derailed and detoured due to the economy.  Review the new requirements for IDP 4.0, and you might find that some if not all of the time you've spent working in an allied field may count for IDP credits.  But there is a deeper core to the experience you've gained in your related-but-not-exactly-architecture gig: everything helps.  

For example, if you are working in marketing for an architecture/engineering/construction firm, ask questions like "why did we ask for a 9% fee on this project but only a 7% fee on that other one?", and even "what do you consider when you're putting one of these together--schedule, complexity, the building's function, etc.?"  Those are great questions that you can learn from and apply as you advance in your career.  If you're working with a product or material rep or a contractor, ask questions there: what makes this hard/easy/fun/frustrating?  Which of these products/materials is best for what application?  What if you used this product/material in a spa/kitchen/hospital/prison?  

So few interns ever get to deal with the front end work of getting a project, and just as many have a hard time getting the chance to pick materials and fixtures or even do on-site CA (which is the best way to learn), so that gives you an additional advantage when working on projects (or applying to other firms to be an intern/designer there).  So learn from whatever your present workplace is and bring that knowledge to a firm once hiring starts up again.  Been working at a restaurant?  Look for firms that do food service and hospitality.  Been working at a clothing store or a bookstore?  Look for those that do retail and commercial.  The best education you could get would be to work on a project from the real beginning (marketing) to the real end (punchlist and closeout), and all the skills you've learned at other jobs and other places can put you ahead of the pack.  You can use those skills to excel as an intern, then get licensed as an architect and eventually be a PM.  

But you have to do the architectural work first.

Have a topic you'd like to see discussed or a question you'd like answered here on Intern 101?  Let me know in the comments or via email in the sidebar.  Thanks, and remember: this blog works best with your feedback!

Update: Decent news for interns in a not-quite-as-awful economy

A reader commented recently on a post I did back in May 2009, on some good news for interns in a crappy economy. His comment is below, starting with a quote from my post:

" If my mid-sized firm's billings have been at all-time low levels for the past 18 months and I've drained what little cash cushion I had, and now I need to ramp back up and complete some projects but also rebuild that cushion, it can be worth my while to hire an intern with only a year's worth of experience out of college than an unlicensed intern with six years' experience."

So what happens to that unlicensed intern with 6 years experience?
Are they doomed because the new normal dictates that someone with too much experience=too much pay?? Seems to me that those of us that have fulfilled most of our IDP requirements and have started testing are stuck in the proverbial gray area.
And what about BIM and Revit. From the time I was ;right-sized' (about a year and a half ago) to now, Revit has suddenly become the latest big requirement, and a deal-breaker for me with at least a couple of interviews. I realize that it's been nearly 2 years since this post, but I feel as though there is a huge pool of experienced talent out there right now that is basically hosed as far as ever working for any firm ever again.

That's an astute observation, and I don't have a firm, applies-across-the-board answer. Some of those 6-year interns will be able to find work at small and medium-sized firms that need good, experienced help but can't yet afford an architect's salary. Some of them will get licensed during the lull and be able to find work because they're licensed but willing to work for a little less. (Note: I'm not saying any of this is okay or we should all be happy that some of the best and brightest of our profession's future are being underpaid--I'm just saying what it is.) Some firms will pass over a 6-year intern for a 6-year architect because for them the pay differential is minimal compared to the benefits of having a licensed and motivated employee. And some of all of these same folks won't be able to find a position at a firm, and they'll have to find something else to do for a living. And some of those people are really good. And it sucks.

The decent news is that in the past 6 or so months, the work has been picking up and firms are hiring again. Not hiring hand over fist, but hiring nonetheless. The problem right now is ultimately that there's a huge pool from which firms can hire--you have a lot of competition for not that many jobs right now, and anything can make or break your chances of getting a job. If knowing how to use a particular form of drafting or graphics software appears to be the only thing keeping you from closing the deal, then take a class or get a friend to tutor you in it. Almost across the board, a firm will have a hard time hiring you if you're unlicensed and don't know how to use the software that you'll be using every day, because so many unemployed interns do have that experience and skill. Also, some firms will see an intern with 6 years of experience and think, "well, why isn't s/he licensed yet? It's been 6 years!" Those firms will pick someone who's licensed and has 6 years' experience over someone who's unlicensed and has the same 6 years' experience. (And some firms will hire the unlicensed person if they're in the process of testing because they feel like they're getting a motivated employee, especially if that intern has been spending their unemployed time getting licensed.)

The folks I see really suffering in our profession in this economy are the folks who went 10+ years without getting licensed as well as those who came to architecture late (i.e., not before the age of about 23 or so) and weren't licensed when they were laid off. Architecture, like many professions, does have an ageist streak, and most firms find it hard to pay a 43-year-old unlicensed intern more than they do a 31-year-old licensed architect. I recently met someone who works at the Department of Labor at a party, and she said that she's noticed a bit of hiring bias at companies across the board, regardless of what field they're in: it seems as if the best way to get a job is to already have one. Some companies will only hire you if you're already working in your field, because they think you have recent experience and your skills aren't rusty. (If this is true, it's a pretty bogus standard for hiring. People who have been unemployed for a while are probably pretty hungry for a chance to prove themselves and work in their field. Go figure.)

Conversely, I've seen firms hire interns with 6 or 7 years' experience because of what their experience was in, such as a particular project type. I know of firms that actively like taking in relatively inexperienced interns because the firms feel like they can "train them right" and not have to undo other firms' poor training. It just depends on the firm, what they like, and what they need. The best you can do is look at your skills, brush up on anything you feel is weak in your resume (if you can), and keep applying and interviewing. You just might be exactly what a firm is looking for.

AIA Young Architects Mentoring Series -- right on!

I apologize for the lack of posts--I've been on deadline and then out of town. Just as I got back, I got the email below from AIA Young Architects Forum. I'm glad to see them really taking a solid interest in mentoring. Hopefully I'll be able to catch one or more of these and report back. (And if you attend one of these webinars, feel free to write a review for Intern 101! And I'm having a hard time getting this to publish properly, so you might be best served by clicking on the links and going right to the website.)

AIA Professional Architect Mentoring Series Session 1: Getting Work The College of Fellows and the Young Architects Forum are sponsoring the development of a new, easy-to-participate webinar series to foster mentoring in the profession. The mentoring series is directed to firm and organization leaders, unlicensed professionals, young architects, and current and potential trainers and mentors to help them understand what mentoring is and how to establish successful mentoring programs.The program will provide established practitioners with the skills and tools to act as mentors and career coaches to young licensed professionals and unlicensed interns. Description: Each webinar will help mentors and mentees deal with a topic, rather than train on the topic itself. Our first session,“Getting Work,”will deal with marketing and business development. Schedule: Session 1: Getting Work Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 2pm EDT Session 2: Profitability Second Quarter 2011* Session 3: Doing Good Work Third Quarter 2011* Session 4: Talent and Culture Fourth Quarter 2011* Participation: View the Professional Architect Mentoring Series flyer, or Register here for the first session. Fee: $15 per registrant (via Paypal.) Groups may view webinar, but individuals must register to receive the 1.5 AIA Learning Unit. *Session under development, date and time to be determined.

The gentle art of product-rep self-defense, Part 2 of 2

Last week we discussed how to screen and deal with initial interactions with product reps and vendors. (We also got some great input and advice from product reps reading the site, and I'll address that at the end of this post. Also, check out the comments on the aforementioned post.) Sometimes, a product rep or vendor will want to take things a step farther and try to get more face time with you. They might ask to take you to lunch or to do a presentation for your office. These invitations can be good ways to learn more about a product or service as well as a person, but there are still a few things to keep in mind when accepting these invitations.

First things first: know who handles product presentations and continuing ed seminars in your office. If you're in a small office, that might mean you (or whoever's being asked by the vendor). As someone who handled every aspect of seminar coordination for ten months, I highly recommend that the scheduling, lunch deliveries, and presenter setup (e.g., if they need an LCD projector for a PowerPoint presentation) be handled by an administrative assistant or office manager, but the yea-or-nay on having the presentation in the first place be decided by an architect. (Trust me--even as an intern, you don't have time to do your actual architectural job plus field all the phone calls and coordinate seminars.) Ask the vendor if they have any AIA-approved continuing ed seminars. Even if your colleagues aren't AIA members, some states still require continuing education credits in order to maintain licensure, and these presentation can be a good way to get those credits as well as learn something that really helps you in your day-to-day jobs.

Second, check with your boss or firm principals if you're unsure about accepting a lunch invitation or an activity invitation from a product rep. In particular, ask him/her how much, if any, project information you're allowed to share. Bear in mind that part of taking you to lunch is sometimes to find out about possible leads, so they may want to know if the Thus-n-Such Elite Condo project is about to go out to bid or if it's still in DDs, and can they get their products in the project or help you with the specs?* If a vendor asks about a project, you may be able to at least say when construction is slated to begin and who is handling product inquiries. (For example, I do a lot of healthcare work with health systems and HMO companies that have contracts with various product and equipment vendors. In those cases, I tell vendors, "Those decisions are made at a national level--I have no influence over whose storage cabinets or autoclaves they use. If you want to get on their list, talk to X person in Minnesota.")

There are ethical rules in place that keep architects from buying work from a client by donating to that client's organization or favorite charity. Your firm principal(s) may have similar rules about accepting gifts, lunches, dinner/drinks, or golfing or skiing outings from vendors and potential consultants as well. Ask first just to be safe. Also, let your manager know if and when you'll be meeting with product reps regarding a specific project. Chances are, your manager has had experiences with similar products and materials and will have questions that they'll want to ask of that rep themselves (or want you to ask on their behalf). It's a good way to learn about the kinds of information you really need from product reps as well as gain a better understanding of how materials work in a building.

Bad product reps call you and leave a voicemail, then email you ten minutes later to see if you got the message, then show up unannounced at your office to see you two hours later (and yes, this actually happened to me recently). Good product reps, however, are much more than salespeople--they understand the forces and issues that affect their product and how it works in your building. Sometimes they were architects, engineers, nurses, teachers, etc. before they were reps, so they can bring an extra layer of knowledge to your project and product selection. This is why bringing some product reps in as early as possible into a project--during early DDs, for example--can be important. You can (hopefully) get the right knowledge and the right product for the job. Some of the best reps I've ever worked with have flat-out told me when their product was not the right one for the job. It made me want to use them again on another project as soon as I could. And frankly, there are a couple that I've worked with for so long that I actually hang out with them socially, just for the fun of it.

*Many product reps will help you in part or in whole with certain spec sections to make sure that their product--or at least one that works as well as theirs--is in your project, thereby assuring a certain level of quality. This happens a lot with door hardware, where the consultant who assembles and assigns hardware groups to your doors will also write the spec to make sure certain products (or at least products of a certain quality) are specified. I've also seen this happen with concrete mixes and admixtures, thermal insulation and waterproofing, and lighting.

If you have a question or a topic you'd like to see discussed here, let me know in the comments or drop me a line via email in the sidebar. Thanks!

The gentle art of product-rep self-defense, Part 1 of 2

The longer you work on a project, the more your name gets associated with that project in your office. This is good when engineers or clients call and the receptionist needs someone to whom s/he can transfer those project related calls. It's not so good when product reps call and ask about the So-and-So project, and the call goes to your desk. Let's be fair: product reps have to sell their products (movable shelving, direct-vent fireplaces, decorative lighting fixtures and systems) or services (equipment coordination, BIM consultancy, HVAC system commissioning). They do that in part by hearing about new projects and following leads, which means calling architects about the projects and seeing if there's a chance the architect would use their product in the project. But while we're being fair, let's also be honest: phone calls and visits from vendors (as we'll call product and service reps for now) can be distracting, disruptive, and downright annoying. How are you supposed to handle these folks? On the one hand, you need to get your work done, but on the other, they might have a product or service that this client could really use.

I deal with this situation on an almost-daily basis for two reasons. One, I'm working now and have worked in the past on some decently-sized and/or high-profile projects, so some reps get sent to me form the front desk, and others are reps I've worked with on previous projects and call about new ones. Two, I was the continuing education seminar coordinator for our office in 2010, which means a ton of vendors now know my name, email address, and phone number. Thank heavens for Caller ID--if I don't know the number calling in, I let it go to voicemail. Interruption averted.

If you're ever caught off guard by a vendor, deflect and defer to your boss. If you get a phone call, transfer them to your boss with the indication to the rep that you aren't in charge of these kinds of decisions ("our project manager, Judy, is in charge of selecting and coordinating equipment along with the owner, so I'll send you to her voicemail"). If they catch you in person, say the same thing and take their business card to pass on to your boss. Taking product literature along with the card can be helpful as long as they don't give you a book. (A lot of product literature tends to go into the recycle bin, so it seems.) Remember: if any rep ever catches you off guard, defer and deflect, no matter the size of the project.

It's important to have a conversation with your project manager about who should handle these calls and visits. Ask your manager if there are any products or services that they're really needing: do you have a client that only uses a certain brand of light fixture? Does this client really need help with inventory planning, distribution, and maintenance? If you know what kinds of vendors you really need, you can thin the herd coming through your phone lines (or go find them yourself). It's also important to know what kinds of projects your firm does, and therefore what vendors your firm does and doesn't need. Now and then, the firm for which I work will get a call, a visit, or an info packet from a company that does custom kitchen cabinets or designs spa bathrooms or closets. Nice to know, but we do little to no single- or double-family high-end residential work. Hence, this person probably shouldn't waste a lot of time courting our business. Letting him/her know that up front is actually a courtesy--it allows the rep to go after people that might really use those products, and it keeps someone from needlessly blowing up your digits for weeks on end.

In Part 2: how to handle lunch invites, presentations, and product libraries. In the meantime, if you have a topic you'd like to see discussed or a question you're dying to have answered, drop me a line in the comments or via my email in the sidebar. Thanks!

Resisting the pull of tunnel vision

Longtime Intern 101 readers know that both my husband and I are architects. I hear couples say that they don't talk about work at home, but I think they're full of it: how do you spend a third of your life somewhere and never talk about it at some point during the other two-thirds? He and I do share about what's going on at our workplaces, and I generally like it because I learn from him and occasionally he learns from me. (It might make for boring pillow talk, but at least we understand the severity of each others' work problems without the other having to go into a long, drawn out explanation of the problem.) Recently, he came home absolutely furious, having spent all day trying to solve a problem. It turns out that the problem was the locations of some exterior windows in his building. The windows were located such that they worked (kinda) for the exterior, but they made wall placement and ceiling layout and soffit locations really problematic in the interior finish of the project. "Someone," he fumed, "spent a lot of time during DDs and CDs trying to make those windows and ceilings work, and they never said one thing about how it wasn't really working. And now I discover the problem in the field, now that the windows are literally set in stone."

It can be hard sometimes to bring up a problem to a project manager, especially when that problem feels like it should be something that you should be able to handle. After all, it's just a ceiling layout, or a pipe going through an exterior wall, or whatever, and you've been working in architecture for two, three, five, seven years. So if you kill a tree and print out the problematic area in question to ask for help in solving it, you look like you don't know how to do your job, right?

Wrong.

Asking for help with something in the drawings is very rarely a bad idea. First of all, if you've been struggling with something for a while and can't make it work, it's possible that all you need are some fresh eyes on the problem. I've wrestled for two hours with making rooms fit into an existing space (since space layout is something I do a lot as a licensed architect), and suddenly one of my bosses looks at my layout and scribbles in the solution in five minutes. I feel like a goober, but it's only because I've been too close to the problem for too long. Furthermore, by showing your project manager/architect/job captain the problem you're dealing with, it may jog his/her memory regarding something super-important: we removed this area from our scope, so you really don't need to try to work it out; oh yeah, there was something important going on in this area that I need to call the engineers about; wow, you're right, we can't specify this or that product because it won't work in that area; and so on. Sharing the problem allows it 1) to be solved sooner or 2) to get the team to realize that something big is happening, or is wrong.

That second scenario is what happened on my husband's job. The project was so big that there were two groups on the team: one worked on the core and shell, and the other worked on the interior tenant finish. The problem is that each group (including its interns) got tunnel vision and forgot that their scope has to work with the other team's scope. Core-and-shell and tenant-infill have to work together, and it's easy to forget that and just plug away at whatever problem comes up, thinking "well, the other group has to have what it has here, and I just have to make do." As long as nothing is built yet, most things can change, at least a little. And in the case of my husband's building, had someone printed out the clunky, weird-looking ceiling plan and showed it to him, he could have called together the infill group and the core-and-shell group and found a solution...when it didn't cost any money to do so.

It's easy to get focused on your role in architecture, both as a problem-solving architect-in-training and as the intern-who-documents-everything-having-to-do-with-this-part-of-the-building. Just because it's your job to work out the exterior walls or the vertical circulation or whatever doesn't mean that you work in a vacuum, and just because you do know something about how buildings go together doesn't mean that you know everything or even have to know everything. Pulling back and remembering how your work fits into the overall project--and then looking at that overall project--helps reduce that tunnel vision that can happen when you work on a smaller piece of a bigger project. Reaching out of your role and your scope and asking questions or for help to solve a problem reduces it even more. It's almost symbolic of how we do what we do: all the parts and pieces of a building make it what it is, and all the people involved in designing and documenting that building allow it to be built smoothly and solidly.

The NCARB expiration date and the start of the 6-Month Rule

I got a question from a reader which I sent on to my contact M at NCARB. Here are the intern's questions and the responses:

Intern Question part 1: I just got my NCARB record going, and I see there is an expiration date - 3 years. Does that mean I only have three years to get all my hours done? Is there a way to extend this period?

NCARB says: When an intern creates an NCARB record, they currently receive three years of service and one transmittal of their record with the application fee of $350. *They can also use a tool in their online record to request a Record Summary to support their application for Early Eligibility to the ARE in participating states. For each additional year of service, there is an annual renewal fee of $75.

Intern Question part 2: Next, the 6-month rule. I understand the diagram, but I'm not sure when my 6 months start. Since I'm unemployed, I can only earn supplementary hours. I'm curious if my clock has started. The three year thing is somewhat discouraging only because I'm unemployed and wonder if I started it too early.

NCARB says: The Six Month Reporting rule now applies to all experience submissions. An intern could not submit experience that has a start date that is older than eight months from today’s current date. An applicant’s three years of service does start on their application date and does not alter due to periods of unemployment. NCARB has made a significant effort to develop new supplementary education opportunities that can be used outside of a traditional work setting.

How can I get a job with no experience?

Ahhhh, fall. A lovely time of year when football season starts, the weather gets cooler, and everyone's sending out their resumes after either taking a summer break or finishing up their degree during summer semester. A couple of months ago, I got a great question from Caitlin, and I'd like to a) apologize for taking so long to get to this, and b) answer it in some semi-coherent way (which is why it took me so long to get to the question).

Caitlin asked:

I have a bit of a personal dilemma involving my job search... I have no architectural experience!
It puts me at a huge disadvantage... I just graduated, no honors or awards to speak of, and a handful of odd-jobs (I only included a couple on my resume itself, I was laughed at by a job fair recruiter once for putting "bartender" on my resume). Any personal connections I've utilized have lead nowhere, which I feel is also a disadvantage.

Caitlin's ultimate question is how to respond to a potential interviewer regarding her lack of experience. That's a great question, and here's the short answer to it: honestly and eloquently.

It does depend on why you haven't gotten an architectural job during college. When I went job hunting (back in the halcyon days of 2000, when the economy was awesome and our money wasn't on fire), I didn't have any real working-at-an-architectural-firm experience. The closest I had was working for one summer in the design & construction department of a resort/nature preserve almost an hour form my hometown, and i worked a couple of summers and Christmases at a local hospital in the medical records department. If someone had asked me why I didn't have any actual firm experience, I would have answered them thus: I was told that all the nearby firms were of poor quality, and all the good firms (in Atlanta) were a 90-minute commute for me. And that was the truth--family friends who had met and worked with architects in our nearby area (within 45 minutes of my hometown) universally panned the local architects as hacks who didn't know how to put a house together, and no one would recommend working with any of the few that were nearby. The firms that might be worth working at, in Atlanta, were at least a 90-minute commute each way for me, living in rural Georgia as I did in college. Furthermore, trying to live in Atlanta or anywhere closer to Atlanta to shorten the drive would have been cost-prohibitive in the mid- to late-1990s. Therefore, I worked a job closer to home that would allow me to be challenged in an unusual way and still learn something. Given the fact that I was now interested in working on healthcare architecture, it would appear that my experience at the hospital might have weighed just as well in my favor as would have working in a firm.

So the truth generally works, as long as it's a reasonable truth. For example, if you just graduated or graduated in the past year, it might be reasonable to say that you haven't worked at a firm because no one has been hiring in the past 12-24 months in your area, so you worked wherever you could, be it bartending, waiting tables, mowing lawns, answering phones for a nonprofit, whatever. (And don't let anyone laugh at you for any job experience--work is work, and you learn something useful in every job that you can use in architecture.)

But let me step back and address Caitlin's bigger concern, that having no experience can hurt you. It really depends on the firm and the economic climate. For example, if you just graduated in the past couple of years, firms likely weren't hiring during the time in which a) you would know enough about architecture to be worth hiring and b) your work hours would count towards IDP. In that case, it's hard to hold your lack of architectural experience against you. Furthermore, there are firms that in whole or in part don't mind taking on interns that have no experience. One of the partners at the firm for which I work prefers taking on fairly inexperienced interns because they tend to have lots of enthusiasm and are willing to work like crazy (within some reason, of course) in order to learn about their profession, plus he and his managers don't have to untrain them of bad habits and practices that they might have picked up at a lesser firm. Also, interns with less experience are cheaper to hire, so it can be worth a firm's time to spend the time to train you because, depending on the project and its schedule, it may still be cheaper than hiring someone with five years' experience. So while not having a lot of experience can feel like a disadvantage, it can be an advantage at certain firms. Ultimately, in a down economy or during the long, slow recovery thereof, a lack of experience isn't exactly a deal breaker, again depending on the firm.