IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013 - 43

Does your applicant pool
suggest a lost generation
of younger designers?

The lingering effects
of the recession have
changed the structure
of the workforce.
Are you assembling
teams differently?

HugHes: Young designers have struggled to find or retain work these last five years.

Many have left the profession. Some have done so temporarily, but others will never
return. Some designers have gone on to pursue additional degrees in the hope that
opportunities will be more abundant when they graduate.
kLawiter: We see the lost generation coming, but not quite yet. It’ll be the incoming
junior designers who cannot beat out the intermediates in experience for wages
required. This has been going on already for some time.
Byrnes: Today’s population of well educated, trained, and experienced talent is
shrinking due to many factors, one of them being the high cost of education versus
the return-on-investment of that education in the real world. My clients are missing
an experienced next generation of leadership that works effectively in a collaborative
environment, produces a high standard of design while mentoring younger designers,
and has the business savvy to build and sustain service-oriented relationships.

HugHes: Our mantra is “One Global Team.” We are looking for talented designers
who can easily move between projects and work well with diverse styles and cultures.
Here’s a scenario that recently occurred: We designed a project in Seattle, worked
up the construction documents in Mexico City, created elaborate renderings
in Shanghai, and performed project management from Dallas. We want to use
the best talent we have, firm-wide, for any given project; in this particular instance,
our design experience was primarily in Seattle. Another reason is that a global
reach allows us to work around the clock, compress our production schedule,
and deliver faster. Finally, there’s cost. On some projects we can assign workloads
globally and avoid having to increase head count. And when we have an overflow
of work, we prefer to go the route of consultants. Doing so gives those consultants
a chance to experience Callison and gives us the opportunity to evaluate someone
for a longer-term position.
kLawiter: We have actively cultivated a large pool of consultants with varying
skill sets, allowing us to structure project teams with a mix of them and full-time
staff. The staff members give us consistency with clients, while the consultants
give us flexibility to, for example, staff up for production phases without long-term
carrying costs. Consistently using the same consultants allows us to integrate them
into our standards and procedures without a learning curve before each deployment.
We’re typically looking for people who have multiple consultant opportunities
or their own outside projects. We’re looking for flexible but not needy.
Hopkins: We use contract employees to help during short periods of heavy
workload. This gives us time to try them out, and vice versa, although managers
are now confident about market trends and hire more regular employees
than contractors. Either way, the concept of a seller’s market and buyer’s market
is real. With the expansion of anonymous social media like glassdoor.com, firms
need to be very cognizant of how each applicant is treated during interview
and employment periods.
Lee: We look for commitment from our new recruits, and we like to reciprocate
that commitment, so we typically do not hire temps.
Byrnes: It is important to examine a firm’s business model, to make sure that its
workforce structure is realistically compatible to that model. My clients assemble
a strong workforce, and within that structure, appropriately build teams
on a project-by-project basis.

perspective

43
http://www.glassdoor.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IIDA Perspective - Spring/Summer 2013
