Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring for Your Architecture Firm

The future success of your architecture firm is always dependent on recruiting and retaining the best talent. In order to accomplish this, you really have to understand what today’s candidates value while avoiding the major hiring mistakes.

In addition to negatively impacting your profit and loss statements, there are plenty of hidden costs associated with hiring errors too. From lost time to low employee morale, you can all but eliminate the following hiring mistakes using the right methods.

• Hiring too quickly: Major architecture projects have tight deadlines. So, many hiring managers are pressured to rush through the recruitment process and hire candidates just because they attended prestigious schools or worked for renowned firms in the past. Although hiring is a time-consuming process, it can still be efficient. If you rush it, then you risk hiring people that will not be the right fit for your company culture.

Successful hiring managers will take the time to assess each candidate’s overall skills and qualities before making the offer. Look past experience and find candidates with the potential to grow into ideal employees.

• Hiring too slowly: Candidates will lose interest in your architecture jobs and start looking for other opportunities if your hiring process takes too long. It can also ruin your reputation. The talent doesn’t want to work for firms that are always short-staffed because it usually leads to job dissatisfaction.

• Unclear job descriptions with the: The top candidates on the market will not consider your positions unless they understand what is required.

• Not knowing what candidates’ values are: Too many firms just assume that money is the only thing that matters to employees. However, recent surveys suggest that work-life balance, approachable leadership, professional growth, and recognition are all just as important.

• Hiring the right talent for the wrong roles: It can be tempting to hire people with great personalities and place them in similar roles that they applied for. Architecture recruiters strongly advise against this practice because it leads to faulty expectations that will only frustrate new employees.

• Not firing toxic employees: From slackers to incompetents, toxic employees come in a variety of categories. The longer that you keep them around, the more that their bad habits will spread. Even though some employees can become toxic after they are hired, more of them are going to slip through when you’re rushing the recruitment process.

Finally, you’re not going to find candidates that fit your architecture firm’s culture by only looking at their resumes. Get to know them by asking powerful interview questions, screening for behavioral competencies and conducting real-time reference checks.

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