Urban Realm Summer 2014 Recruitment

RECRUITMENT

37

JOHN GLENDAY

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GILLIAN HAYES, DAPPLE PHOTOGRAPHY

JUST THE JOB THE NASCENT ECONOMIC RECOVERY MAY YET TURN OUT TO BE A DEAD CAT BOUNCE BUT FOR NOW ARCHITECTS HAVE A SPRING IN THEIR STEP. HERE WE LOOK AT THE KNOCK ON EFFECTS FOR BOTH SALARIES AND EMPLOYMENT PROSPECTS.

Empty desks are starting to be filled again as the economy perks up

With many practices recruiting again in volumes not seen since the inset of the financial crash in 2008 there is a new found confidence in the air amongst both employees and employers, offering some relief to those frozen out of the industry. Testing the waters of this tentative rebound Urban Realm took the pulse of some of those who are hiring again and ask whether present growth is sufficient to tempt a new generation of students to consider architecture as a career. Is this beginning to feed through to salaries and reduce the available pool of graduates and experienced talent?

Commenting on this recent reversal in sentiment Matthew Gilchrist, consultant at Peace Recruitment, told Urban Realm: “When I started in January the market was pretty quiet but it’s starting to pick up. Companies still >

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RECRUITMENT

SALARY SURVEY

The following figures were obtained from interviews with 100 architects carried out by Peace Recruitment.

Do you feel you are a valued member of your current employer?

How much of an increase would you move for?

45% 4k-8k

60%

45%

100

No

Non-Essential % Consideration % Essential %

60

Yes

No Yes

Increase in Hols

Flexible Hours

Healthcare

Bonus Scheme

Improved Pension

75%

10% 15% 15%

Yes

Would you move for more money?

When did you last have a salary review?

Yes

25 20

Yes

50%

Last 12 months

15

Last 6 months

10

Last 3 months

think that it’s a client driven market so they can pick and 5 choose that 10 out of 10 candidate with the right experience, qualifi cations, salary and location (rather than a seven out of 0 10 individual) but they are harder to find and will cost more money.

“Smaller private practices tend to recruit on a contract or temporary basis, with the option after three to six months to bring them on permanently. A lot of clients also receive a number of unsolicited CV’s a week not in regard to any real position - just to have a look. Candidates are aware that the market is picking up, people are actively looking for jobs and from word of mouth you’re going to know other people are becoming more confident, certainly the right candidates are. I’m starting to get an influx of recent graduates and I know of very well respected companies both in Glasgow and Edinburgh who have taken on graduates, by no means URBAN REALM SUMMER 2014 URBANREALM.COM

between 30k and 35k between 30k and 35k between 25k and 30k between 25k and 30k under 25k under 25k

Never had a job description 8k-10K

30%

Never had one Longer than 12 months

85%

over 35k between 40k and 45k

10k-15k

No

15%

25% 25%

over 60k over 35k

How much of an increase would you move for?

Does your job match its description?

No

30

25% 25%

20%

25%

Better Car/Allowance

this year?

over 60k

5% 5%

20 0

Salary split

Plan on moving this year?

40

No

Up to 4k

What else is Important?

80

more money?

10k-15k 8k-10K

Yes

40%

re a valued ent employer?

5%

5%

No

No 4k-8k Yes Up to 4k

20%

Does your job match its description?

through agencies, but by the get up and go attitude of graduates contacting the companies, putting their CV’s in Never had a job description and making some background noise.”

No A recent survey of 100 architects conducted

by Peace Yes Recruitment found a full 85 per cent were ready to move for a fatter pay cheque, results which Gilchrist attributes to the development of a low pay culture over recent lean years. “In the last three or four years there have been a lot of people who’ve been fortunate to find or keep a job as a technician or architect in private practice but their salaries don’t fully reflect their qualifications and experience. That is the main driving point for a lot of people getting in touch speculatively to see what the market’s like and whether there’s anything suitable to them.

“What I would say though, when it comes to giving the best advice, is that it’s sometimes better staying with these

39

GILLIAN HAYES, DAPPLE PHOTOGRAPHY

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The team at Gareth Hoskins Architects scrutinise the latest speculative CV to pass through their letterbox

well respected companies because it’s going to reflect well on their CV’s if they stay three or four years. A lot of the candidates have been very loyal to their companies and their employers have been loyal to them too.”

One such employer, Jennifer Guillain, director of finance and development at Gareth Hoskins Architects, told Urban Realm: “People are perhaps now in a slightly stronger position to negotiate on salary, they don’t necessarily accept the first offer. We’ll generally have a selection of people on file. People think when you say ‘we’ll keep you on file’ that you’re giving them a polite brush off but we do actually keep a selection of CV’s where someone’s really impressed.“ If the type of jobs available is changing then so too are the mediums in which they are being solicited, with a move away from blanket print campaigns toward targeted digital offers through social media and the practices own websites.

“I can’t actually remember the last time we placed an advert in the back of the AJ or the BD, it’s either been through our own website or Urban Realm”, Guillain observed. “It’s a digital age so people just search online for that information. We can get applications that same day if we post a vacancy on our own website. We’ve also backed that up with word of mouth

through our own team, which has really paid off for us in the past. You tend to know through friendships which practices are struggling and where there is likely to be people being cut who would be good people that needed work.”

Asked whether she had observed any lowering of wages through the recession Guillain highlighted a divergence between the architecture and support side, stating: “When we were advertising for clerical staff we would often find we were inundated with CV’s from people who had degrees but who were out of work for some time and were just looking for any job. We had somebody jot in an application on a piece of foolscap irregularly torn out of a jotter and hand scrawled in pencil. You can hardly take it seriously but you can’t tell if somebody was told to do it and they’ve deliberately made a bad hash of it or if that’s genuinely how they apply for a job.”

At the other end of the scale however Guillane is impressed by the quality of applicants, with decisions often boiling down to the quality of drawing work. “With the level of education that someone’s had you’re going to get an intelligent and well scripted cover letter that at least gives the impression that you’re a practice they really want to >

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RECRUITMENT

SALARY SURVEY CONT.

work for and no-one else,” explained Guillane. “You don’t know if that’s just a wonderfully tailored letter that’s written slightly differently for a hundred practices but we do find that most letters will refer to one project of ours, or some understanding of the way that we work as a different culture from where they come from.

“We try to have more of a studio approach with ongoing design reviews every week which is perhaps a slightly different atmosphere to larger more corporate firms where you might be doing a tiny part of a huge project for months on end.”

Alistair Scott, director at Smith Scott Mullan Architects, added: “All the usual dynamics of post-recession staffing are now in evidence. Practices are trying to recruit the best people, while architects and graduates are researching employers for good experience and long term prospects.

Our profession has lost critical age groups and a large number of graduates have missed out on vital years of experience. In addition the skill set has changed and, at URBAN REALM SUMMER 2014 URBANREALM.COM

least in our practice, there has been a large investment in processes such as BIM.” Looking further ahead however Scott is notably less ebullient, identifying several unresolved structural issues within the profession which look set to hamper the standing and financial clout of the profession in the years ahead. “Throughout my career, I have listened to how undervalued and underfunded architecture is, in spite of numerous campaigns by the RIAS and others to address this,” remarked Scott. “But much of the problem is selfinflicted, architects have endless capacity for blaming clients, project managers and everyone else for our unstainable fee levels. But we really need to carefully look at the ideals and structure of the profession as a whole.

“Most architects are driven by a desire to produce a quality product. However this requires a more stable financial base and while few of us go into architecture to get rich, we need to have graduates who are not lumbered with student debt for decades and older guys who can afford to pay off

41 SPONSORED BY

Alistair Scott poses alongside Eugene Mullan, Jamie Bateman, Rick McCluggage, Graham Acheson, James Dunney, Neil Forrester, Stephen Riley, Esther Macias, Shauna Grant, Ken Scriven, Joanne Dunwell, Mark Steedman, Michael Macdonald, David Tinto, Andrew Jess, Stephen O’Loughlin, Ruth Mitchell, Sarah Barron, Gael Fisher, Susan Cymber, Rachel Simmonds and Thomas Smith

a mortgage. Too many practices seem to be operating on the breadline and the basic structure of the profession is not helping. Over the last 25 years we have seem almost every other part of our industry, engineers, quantity surveyors, lawyers, coalescing into larger units which provide the critical mass to engage with the increasing diversity of skills clients are demanding.

“The result is that we either have a significant number of practices which are sized to meet these demands or we become insignificant ‘support players’ to other consultants and contractors. Unfortunately I think the latter is the way things are currently heading, and while I would deeply love the world to change to suit our position, I doubt it is going to.”

One mechanism of preventing Scott’s fears from coming to pass would be the creation of more homegrown practices with the scale and ambition to grow internationally with the requisite clout to drive the agenda, reversing a general trend of fragmentation in the industry and the humbling of former

giants such as RMJM. Scott said: “We lack large Scottish headquartered practices which can work within a UK and International context. To support a thriving architectural community in Scotland we also need some of our larger, established practices to have the ambition to start working on a broader canvas, and hence open up opportunity for the rest. These are big issues, well beyond those of recruitment, but our eyes and minds need to be on them if we want to have a better future than we’ve had a past.”

Recruitment is an investment in the future and whilst that future now appears rosier than at any time in the past five years it remains hamstrung by largely intact systems of governance, procurement and pay that ushered in the crisis in the first place. If architects are to retain their present foothold in the construction food chain let alone reclaim their place at the top of the pecking order these issues must be addressed, or today’s recruits may find themselves disillusioned by the diminishing stature of their profession going forward.

Peace Recruitment is an independent recruitment consultancy specialising in permanent, freelance, interim and fixed term appointments to consultancies, contractors and the public sector within the built environment.

If you have any questions or queries related to architecture vacancies our dedicated consultant Matthew Gilchrist will be happy to assist.

Peace Recruitment Fettes House 496 Ferry Road Edinburgh EH5 2DL

T: 0131 516 3350 F: 0131 443 3785 M: 07837 579647 Email: matthew.gilchrist@peacerecruitment.co.uk