Thanks everyone for your responses - it is great to hear things from the side of the principals/employers to clear up what is expected of us aspirant/candidates. Special thanks to BlueGoose, archie, file, goodA and treea for your insights at the receiving end of our resumes- I myself will have to run a hard campaign like running for office - One of my associates did just that and got a paying job as an urban planner - she went to all the local AIA events, and networked like crazy - did volunteer pro-bono work, and finally got noticed. That’s what it takes - daunting? you bet -

that sounds great puddles.

file may not care too much about cover letters and rightly points out that most sound moderately stupid so i understand the point.

still...the ability to write a not silly-sounding letter is a real signal to us that we should pay attention. in fact we are looking at a few people right now who were able to do that. if all goes well we will hire one of them in near future.

cover letters matter.

So true - We had a meeting at San Francisco AIA about the very subject - The letters have to be not only be perfectly written but very compelling - One of our group got a paying job - needless to say her writing skills are extraordinary. She researched the firm and noticed subtleties and details in their work that was similar to her own then drew up comparisons in a very compelling way. The downside is - if everyone writes better cover letters the bar will be raised even higher to a level like writing a paper to get into an Ivy league school - if that's what it takes then -

E.G. I think what puddles wrote saysit - I don't always scroll up and often restate the obvious - probably one reason why I am not working.

there's a lot of good advice in there.

the way i think of the cover letter (as one reading them): this is the first impression i'm going to see on what should be the most important job you're trying to get (which is always the current one). i kill myself trying to write great cover letters to get the work that's ultimately paying for that job you're applying for - if i don't see the same care, craft, and passion in it, what are you going to bring to our clients work? my rep is partly in your hands. if you're 'mailing it in', what can i expect you to do on the job?

GoodA advises "you need to stand out like a shiny nickel in the barnyard".

Well, I do. That is the problem. The bulk of this discussion seems to be between seniors who hire and recent grads. I don't fall into either category. I am seriously experienced with many years at one of the top firms, and some pretty important work at another firm before that. My portfolio is one well known project after another. Here are some of the comments I've received from interviewers:

"Don't you have any turkeys? [in your portfolio] You'd never be happy here"

"So that's what happened to that job!" [we got it and they didn't]

"You are overqualified"

"Your resume is awfully rich." [for this firm]

"That portfolio must have cost a lot of money. We don't do that around here" [I have a lot of 36 x 48 color plots in my portfolio]

Here's one I really love:

"I've seen all this before". [36 x 48 color plots REALLY stand out in an interview. No one forgets them quickly]

I investigated this one. It seems that a junior that was assigned to work with me (I'm an RA) had been quietly saving test plots, markups and other documentation. After he quit, he started presenting them as his own work. Because of this experience, I try to keep some documentation in my own hand so that it is clear it is my own work. The downside of this, they are originals not in PDF or any other electronic format. PDF has only become common within the last few years or so. Most of my portfolio is on paper. A scanner I ordered arrived yesterday. I'll be spending the entire weekend scanning. I hope to pull together something in PDF format. My complaint is that anyone with more than five years of experience is unlikely to have electronic data. And the source files [at the firm I no longer work for] are unavailable to me.

One more thing: I don't have a stolen copy of Acad. So I can't create PDFs at home from the few dwg files I do have. I have one Revit file that is totally encumbered by a non-disclosure agreement that I had to sign in front of witnesses!

Mike - have you thought about practicing on your own? Do you really want to re enter the disaster that is the contemporary architecture firm? Unless your bringing in clients, there’s no shortage of technicians and project leaders out there who can also design, for half the cost. The world has changed my friend. The only way to take control of your destiny is practicing for yourself.

“the disaster that is the contemporary architecture firm”
This is the strident stupidity that I have referred to. Is it a disaster because you got laid off? Please share your vision of the ideal architectural firm. I imagine it has some blatantly obvious, but overlooked by everyone else but you, mechanism that immunizes it to economic downturns.

Again, I find myself agreeing with Jack. Fees are taking a huge hit and the overhead that a typical firm charges, and I mean a corporate place with $20k of rent or more a month, is not sustainable in this economy. Bidding wars are the norm and fees are being dragged down.

There are some interesting changes with the self-cert stuff here in Chicago that's gonna change the landscape as well.

GoodA, I own my own firm, it is ideal in that it allows me to set my schedule, do the projects I see fit, Control the process and make a nice income even if sporadic. It also allows me to choose whom I work with for example a smug individual such as yourself would never be hired to work with me, I can sense presumptuous individuals pretty quickly, its a skill you acquire when you sell your own work. By contemporary I mean the current corporate organization, not any specific style of design.

Jack Klompus, My observations are not nearly as complacent as yours. I have also developed a keen rat-radar system - and you are promoting an unfortunately prevalent and naive belief that contemporary architectural firms are a disaster because they somehow do not provide “entitled” employment. Do you? Or are you a one man shop, who has never had to lay-off employees? I didn't take your word “contemporary” as a “style of design” but since you brought it up, if contemporary architectural practice is in any way a disaster as you insist, it is indeed because of a specific style of design.

By the way, I wouldn't consider a job if my income was depicted as sporadic.

p.s. i know this thread is dead, but this comment caught my eye and i had to respond:

"Graphic design is on its way out. I mean you can do internet design but it has a steep learning curve when it comes to coding. Otherwise, the print world is dead unless you want to work for publications that pander to the lowest common denominator."

buddy, the ignorance combined with self-assurance embodied in that statement is laughable (and sadly recognizable...why can't we architects just admit we don't always know everything about everything?). graphic design encompasses a lot more than the web and print. graphic design is all visual information & communication, something that won't be going out of style for a long, long time. as long as humans have eyes and need to transmit information to one another, there will be graphic design. proof? my graphic designer boyfriend's company has been steadily expanding over the past year, while i've been pinned down at my current sooopersketchy job with no exit in sight. unfortunately, they're not hiring architects...so the sentiment stands. no jobs for us. (sad trombone)

For someone who has gotten an offer at every interview I've ever had (in architecture) and can't even GET an interview now, I'm in that "We were very impressed... yada yada, but you were not selected for an interview..." group. Yes, that, among other things, leads me to think I better find something else.

All of my experience thus far has been quite varied, which I thought was good for my career at the time. But the positions that are open now seem to be very specific. You have to be THE candidate for the job. That means if the job wants someone with 8.3 years of experience in education renovation projects, don't expect to be considered with anything BUT 8.3 years of education experience, even if you have quite a bit of education projects, some of them renovations even, in your portfolio. I am SOO frustrated. Similar to -jay's post above, I guess.

As for copying and sending out documents without changing the name on them, one of the architects I worked with printed some 40 project manuals with the name of a rival school's name on the cover sheet and every footer in the whole doc. It happens, and boy does it suck!

For those of you who haven't yet noticed, we've just published this:



Composing the Personal Narrative
Archinect's Official Portfolio Guide
Part II: The Search for Employment
http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=93642_0_23_0_M

With the current economic downturn forcing many talented designers back into the academic world or into the realm of unemployment, we must remain focused on conveying our talents and experiences in the most effective manner to remain competitive. Part One of this series released previously, included advice on preparing an academic portfolio and applying to graduate school. This portion focuses on resume composition, portfolio sample preparation and the search for professional employment. I have included examples of my design work and detailed some of my own personal experiences while engaged in this process. The articles in this series will consider questions from hundreds of past discussion threads and provide one central resource for answers.

Orochi -

You are outta-control-funny! Thank you for shedding humor on this oh-so lovely subject....

I miss jplourde.

nigga was alright-- a true brosef. i'd like to have a beer with him, have a stern disagreement over rotten intellectual discourse and promptly tell him to fuck his couch.

but shit, i aint funny anymore because I don't get my drink on before 3 past noon.

unless it is champagne or pimms'n'lemonade or scotch.

and i don't like my 5 dollar a bottle champagne place during the day because the gas station lady is a rotten trixie with a huge fupa. it looks like her lady parts ate a couch cushion and then drowned in a pair of acid washed mom jeans.

It's a 'classy' hood - there....

say 'word'..... WORD

Alice attack

I think it's important to consider that the crisis right now is not in architecture. It's in the building, construction and real estate indsutry - too many people chasing, little available financing, little new construction activity. Getting an MBA isn't going to help you in this industry, or even greatly improve your chances for employment in it.. you'd have to leave the design/development arena altogether with your new degree to notice a difference, in which case you might as well go get a computer science, medical, law, or veterinary degree - areas where there actually are jobs. My local ULI chapter surveyed its developer-, contractor-, banker-focused membership recently and found nearly 40% unemployment. And these are the MBAs.

This being said, there are opportunities. For example, I think there may be some mileage for technically oriented (or just hands-on/build-oriented) architects to work as locally-based building sustainability consultants - advising individual home- and apartment-building owners, commercial land-lords, schools and other institutions, and homeowners' associations on how to integrate energy-saving/ water-saving/ waste-reducing systems into the redesign and rehabilitation of their buildings. It's not quite as exciting as sculpting the aesthetics of the future city but it is important, socially- and environmentally-relevant downstream work, and it is design.

All of us should know how to deal with facade/orientation issues and their impacts on building energy us. Many of us should, in theory, have the B/T skills to know how to cost, configure and possibly install a solar-hot-water system or design a PV or even ground-source heat pump system, for example. We can easily acquire, with some additional traditional, a knowledge of DOE energy-modelling tools and familiarize ourselves with the energy requirements of appliances, etc.

With some much in the way of financial/tax incentives available from municipalities, state and Federal government agencies to install "greening" systems, independent exercise will increasingly be needed at the nuts-and-bolts level...

You won't, however, be looking for a job with a big firm in this area, and that's true for the changing nature of employment in this country. Many of these consultants and contractors will be self-employed, building networks through neighborhood-based advertising and word of mouth. They'll work out of their own garages, literally... they'll develop their own network of vendors, and so forth. This isn't so much about architecture as it is about the workforce: the future is in benefitless self-employment whether we like it or are ready for it or not.

On the bright side, another thing to think about is this: the building and development industry on which we depend as designers WILL COME BACK. The population of this country is still growing at close to 1% a year and even without populationg growth and older cities need to replace around 3% of its residential building stock and 2% of its non-residential building stock every year on average.

Right now, financing is not available, so projects aren't getting built, but there will, increasingly, be pent up demand. It may be one year or five years away, but it will come. This pent up demand, as it builds up, will result in increasingly put upward pressure on prices, and this will spur financiers and developers to re-enter the market. Who knows what form this future development will take, or even how the financial rules will work, be it'll come one way or another.

We don't have to throw away our degrees yet.

I thought this may be of interest to people:

http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/09/01/young-workers-a-lost-decade/

It's a report on how workers 25-35 are now being called a lost generation - a group that has to deal with 30%+ rates of unemployment, no income gains, living it home, many without insurance, etc, etc.

The problems many in the architecture and allied professions are seeing are much deeper and broader than just our one area, and there are few safe harbors anywhere anymore.

Not in this time, in this country...

But I thought this country was "too big to fail..."