Help I can't hire. Welcome to this episode of The Business of Architecture podcast. I'm your host, Enoch Sears, and if you're still running a practice the old way, I invite you to head over to smartpractice method.com where you'll discover this simple framework that hundreds of architects just like yourselves, are using to run their small practices. They get more freedom, fulfillment and financial reward. So with that, we're going to address a very big question today, which is simply this, how do I hire Now, if you've been in the architectural realm for a while, you know that this industry is cyclical. You know, I don't need to tell you that we have recessions, that we have boom times, and then, because of this, oftentimes the workforce and architecture flows up and down. As a matter of fact, I myself am a so called casualty of the workforce, having been laid off back in 2008 during the Great Recession, when tons of architects were laid off and ended up leaving the profession. So what you might find as a small firm owner is that it's very difficult to hire. Maybe you're overloaded right now. Maybe you're finding that you're having to put in more hours than you would like, maybe you're finding that the products are moving to the office as smoothly as you'd like, or maybe they're taking too long. Or perhaps you finding that there's a gap in experience. You're finding that you're having to correct the drawings too often. You're finding that there's a lot of rework that needs to be done, and maybe even at times, you're feeling frustrated and wondering why your team doesn't know how to do what you are paying them to do. And now a message from today's sponsor, if you haven't used R cat's spec wizard before, hey, now's the time to try it out. Spec wizard is a patented tool that allows you to specify a product in just three steps, all for free and without even registering step one, research and find the right products for your project on our cat.com Step two, use the spec wizard tool to select the right products and options. Step three, generate a complete three part CSI or CSC specification based on your selections. Now maybe you enjoy toiling through long documents, parsing things together and creating a specification, and if that's your case, well this probably isn't for you, but if you want to get it done in half the time that it used to, or even a fraction of that, our cat is your place again. Spec wizard is free to use and requires zero registration. So to use it, head over to our cat.com that's a R, C, A t.com, today, and try spec wizard. R cat is a fantastic resource, and one that I counted on when I was actively practicing architecture to help me simplify getting these important specifications right. It's
time to announce this month's 200 304 100 club, if you missed our episode on the 200 club, listen to boa Episode 485 to learn more about this new initiative for benchmarking small firm performance. So a big congratulations to our 200 club members, Ramiro Torres, Julia, Aria, Philip Yang and Sean kakigi, Jorge, catran Yogesh, Mistry, Marina Rubina, Brad Smith, dinambola, Yost bende, George argeris, Brad Hubble and Suzanne, Daly Judy and Larry April and Chris Driscoll. Our 300 club members this month are Charles scram, Irini Adams, Mark Elster and Christopher Brandon. And our whopping 400 club members are Kimberly dokes, Andrew and Justine Tyndall. Great job to all of our 200 304 100 club members. Keep up the fantastic work.
So if you're having this problem of not being able to hire this is probably occasioned by a couple of very specific problems. Number one, you may feel overwhelmed and overloaded with the things, with all the work coming in your office right now, you may feel that you're in the awkward position of actually not being able to take on work. You're worried that if you tell clients you can't take on work, this is going to damage potential relationships with clients, and it's going to impact your ability to take on work in the future, you may be in a place where it's been this way for a while. You've realized that you need to hire. You realize that you're overloaded. You realize that you're not delivering the kind of service to your clients that you want to deliver. You may have found that you're not getting any good job candidates for applying to the job ads that you've put out there, or perhaps you've hired people, but you're finding they're not a perfect fit for what you actually need, and as a result, it's still leaving some gaps in the team. The team isn't working effortlessly together. It feels less like a finely tuned Swiss watch and more like a fire alarm situation. Or perhaps you've even hired someone who maybe wasn't the right fit and you had to let them go. As a matter of fact, your Business of Architecture with my small team, we just had this experience. I know it's difficult to hire, and that's what we'll be addressing in this episode today of the Business of Architecture podcast, is that hiring is not easy. You know, not only does it require potentially, Some so called luck or some some some auspicious circumstances, meaning that the bright person comes to you, but also requires a very careful vetting process. It requires a lot of your. Time to identify what's the role and actually make the hire. And so what we find is that it's very easy not to put in the right amount of time that you need to devote to actually hiring your next architectural employee. So the situation we found ourselves in here is that as our team was growing, we needed administrative assistant to be able to handle some of the busy work that we have here as a consultancy in our work with architecture firms, we needed someone that could maybe do some social media work for us. We needed someone that could do a lot of the repetitive tasks. And as an architectural practice, you probably have needs like this as well. So we have a tried and true hiring process. We searched for this person for about four months, and we got a lot of job applicants. We put them through our job funnel. Everything was going great. We came up with an excellent candidate, but as we hired this person, we found there were a couple things that weren't quite a fit. So she was working remote, not a problem. We have a remote team, but as we began to progress, we began to discover that she wasn't quite as flexible with her schedule as we had hoped that she would be. So, you know, she was kind of dictating to us when she would be available, and for a lot of the tasks, that was acceptable. But as time went on, over the next 30 days or so, we begin to see that her attention to detail wasn't quite what we needed. And so we came to the inevitable conclusion, me and one of my senior team members that we had to let this lady go. Now, you know, no one likes letting anyone go, and it wasn't, you know, it was probably something she was looking forward to. But what I do know is, when you make that move, when you let someone go, if you do it in a methodical way that's well thought out, and of course, you comply with any laws that regard the letting go of someone, that it's going to be the best for your business and it's going to be the best for that person. So what's the possibility when you're able to actually hire instead of being in a position where you can't hire? Well, it's very simple. Four. Number one, you have the right fit in terms of an employee in your in your practice. Number two, this results in you having more freedom as a business owner. You have more time to focus on the things that you want to focus on. Number three, this is going to roll right down to your bottom line. You make more money. This means you can take vacations. It means you can invest in the practice. It means that you can compensate your employees more. You can give them bonuses. You can invest in their training. You can invest in creating the kind of culture that's going to keep them long term and build your business into an asset. And number four, your quality of delivery goes up. If you have the right person in the right spot, the service is going to go up. The good word of mouth is going to spread about your practice. It's going to be easier to get future projects because you've delivered such good projects in the past. So we can see this is why hiring the right person with your practice is so essential. So let's look at the principles here. Principle number one is, as we look at why it's so difficult to hire, we should really look at the root causes, right? And this would be a good opportunity for you to look at what are the root causes that would cause it to be difficult for me to hire. Now, there's there's larger things that you have no control over, right? There's obviously the larger economy that happens out there, there's the fact that you may be in an area where it may be hard to find architectural talent. You may be an area where the cost of living is very high, and so what you're finding is that it's very difficult to keep people because at the rates that you you have to pay them, they can't afford to live there. Or you may be in a rural area where you know everyone wants to be in the city, and you're finding that there's a lack of architectural talent. Of architectural talent. So these are some of the forces that you need to deal with as a business owner. And this is why running a business is not only you know not It's not easy, but it also, this is why it's it comes with such great reward. Is because when it works out, it really works out. And the reason why it really works out is because it's difficult to do so. Principle number one, when you look at hiring the right person for your firm, is to recognize that it's possible. Now this may be hard to wrap your mind around, because you've tried, tried hiring in the past. You put you know, you've gone through great efforts to hire. You've had a job posting up for maybe a year or more. You've got a lot of job applicants, but none of them actually match what you actually need. And so in your mind, you're convinced, because you see the evidence, that it's difficult to hire and there's just no one out there to hire. As you listen to the rest of this podcast episode, or watch this episode, what encourage you to do? You have to start with the possibility that, as a matter of fact, it is possible to build a self directed, self motivated team. It is possible to get into place the people and attract the kind of talent that we need in our practice, whether we're in an area where there's a high cost of living, or whether I'm in a rural area where there's a lack of architectural talent, there are solutions that exist now. What are the easiest solutions that may not have the pros and cons that you want, of course, is outsourcing. I'm not going to talk about that in today's episode. That's a whole nother episode. What we're going to talk about is actually hiring an employee who can be physically at your location and who is full time dedicated to your practice. So when we look at this, how do we do this? The second principle here, first principle is possible. Second principle is consider that your hiring is a mark. Marketing and Sales exercise, right? Your hiring is a marketing and sales exercise. What do I mean by that? Well, just like your practice is going to either attract or repel the right kind of clients, based upon your visibility in the marketplace, your ability to attract the right candidates to your firm depends on a number of things. It depends on how visible your practice is. It depends on how your practice is positioned, right? The kind of work you do, how they perceive you compared to your competitors. It's going to and that includes the kind of culture you have in your practice. But out of all these factors, one of the top ones, of course, is the visibility and the positioning. If we just take those two things, okay, my visibility, how visible is my practice to potential job hires? And number two is the positioning, like, how are we perceived from people outside of our practice? Now, if you're like most small firm owners, your ability to think about these things proactively and intentionally is limited because you're so very busy just dealing with the day to day that you haven't spent the time or hire the consultants or the people to come in and help you establish these two things greater visibility and also make sure that the positioning matches what you want. But when you understand that hiring is a marketing and sales exercise, then you understand, well, it operates by the principles of marketing and selling, meaning that we need to get our marketing message, which is your job posting out to as many of the right people as possible. So how do we do that? Principle number three, fish, where the fish are? Okay, if I'm going fishing and I want to fish for salmon, I'm not going to go to my local lake because my local lake doesn't have any salmon. But if I'm fishing for trout, for instance, which, by the way, I hear, are a kind of salmon, if I'm going to fish for trout, I can go to my local lake, but I'm not going to catch any steel hood or Chinook salmon there. So the same thing applies with your marketing when it comes to your practice, as well as hiring and attracting the right kind of people for your practice as well fish where the fish are. Now, I hate to break it to it, and I wish this wasn't the case, but just posting a job ad on the local AIA job board is not sufficient of a marketing exercise. If you want to hire a top quality person, you're going to need to do the effort to hire that top quality person. Now this goes without saying. They may wonder, okay, Enoch will like, what are the steps that I need to do? What are the actual things if it's not that okay, what I do know is that
birds of a feather flock together. Okay, this is why, if you had exceptional hires in the past, what you've usually found, if you've had this opportunity, is that maybe some of your employees came because they were referred by other employees of your practice. As a matter of fact, when I was an architectural professional, this is how I found several of my jobs, is that my friends that went to school with me. Said, Hey, Enoch, we're at this great firm. We're looking for someone. Do you want a job? And then I considered it, and I ended up jumping ship. And the same thing happened where I told one of my friends about a job at my at the firm where I was working. He ended up jumping ship and coming over to work with us. So that's one way in which you can identify where the fish are, right? What are the networks that you need to be in, who are the people in contacts that you need to be getting to know so they can refer the right work. Because here's the thing, if you're just depending on a job posting on monster or indeed, you're fishing in a very particular fishing hole, meaning the only person people you're usually going to attract at that time are people who are in the market for a job at that moment. So obviously, your your pool is going to be very small potential candidates. Now I'm not telling you anything that you don't know, but you've never, probably had it laid out exactly like this in such a sequential way in the past, which is why, if you run an architectural practice, this episode is going to want to be one you're going to want to bookmark now, to be able to fish where the fish are, to be able to put your marketing efforts hiring directly targeted at the right kind of people who you want to attract to your firm. You need to be very clear on the fish that you actually want to attract. So we need to understand, are we throwing out our net to catch shrimp, you know, are we casting a deep line to catch some salmon, or are we fishing on the surface for some tuna? Are we going to go for some rock cotton? We're going to sink that thing right down to the bottom? The bottom. Okay. This is why having a very, very clear job role, or roles that you've packaged together for this particular position is so essential. So you know exactly like this is the person we're looking for. So then you know where to go find them. In marketing, there's this talk of an avatar which is our ideal client. So if you've been through any marketing exercises before, if you've studied marketing, if you've marketed your architectural practice with a consultant, you know that oftentimes they'll take you through an ideal client exercise where you identify, Okay, who is our ideal client? What does this person look like? What's their demographic? What's their psychographic? The very same thing applies to your architectural candidate, whether it's an administrative candidate or whether it's an architectural candidate, need to be very clear on what are their psychographics, meaning, how do they think? What are their demographics? Right? This not only applies to like, where do they live, but it also their education level, their experience, things of that sort. Now, after you've identified. And you're very clear on the fish that you want to catch, then you're unable to go out and find the right fishing hole to catch those particular employees. Principle number five is to plant your tree now. As you know, if you need to hire someone right now and you can't find someone to hire, it's a difficult situation to be in, because that typically means that you and your team are working more than you'd like to. Maybe you're not being able to take on the kind of projects that you'd want to. Maybe you're having to tell clients, you know what, we have a waiting list and we can't help you out. This might even result in you losing some clients and going over to other firms that have the bandwidth to be able to help them out, which we all know that getting good clients in the architecture industry is is not easy, so that's probably not something you're looking forward to doing. So principle number five is so important because it's about planting your tree. Now, the best business builders that I know are people who keep in contact with their network, and so one of the most important skills you can get as a firm owner is the habit of keeping in contact with your network. So I encourage you to get some sort of system into place. Make a list, get some sort of CRM program. Get something that reminds you to reach out and keep in touch with people that you're in contact with. As a matter of fact, I have a friend of mine who was the COO of the architecture and construction company that I was at. Great gentleman. His name was Jim Bell, and he was working for a gigantic development company, came over and started working with us in Texas when I was working Texas when I was working there. And Jim was a great guy, like he was a guy who knew how to connect with people. And even though he was several tears higher up on the hierarchy chain than I was after he left that position, he reached out to me and he said, Enoch, I'm in the market for another job. Do you know anyone looking for a position like the one that I have? This is how business builders who are successful. This is how they operate. They're keeping in touch with their network. They're reaching out to people they know. They're spreading the word. They're keeping in contact. Now, the last thing I'll say about this is based upon a story, something that happened to me just last week. So I had, I had, I had someone who I know in my network reach out to me, and this person's been following me on social media for a while. He's like, hey, Enoch, let's catch up. I want to chat with you really quick. Now, I've never talked with this guy on the phone. I've met him in person, and we chatted here and there over social media and things like that. You know, liking each other stuff and stuff like that. So I thought, I didn't know what he wanted to talk about, but I was intrigued, so I called him up. Well, it turns out that what he wanted is, he wanted to ask me for a personal loan. Okay? He's like, I'm in a difficult situation right now. My business has gone downhill right now. As a matter of fact, my wife and I are getting a divorce. Like, it's pretty sad, difficult situation. And he's like, because of that, I've neglected my business as I was trying to launch a new business. So our revenue has gone down, and I'm looking at potentially losing our house. We're going to lose our cars. I have a storage unit full of stuff that I might lose as well. And he's like, I'm trying to raise $6,500 now, obviously this is not a lot of money when someone has a business that's functioning well, but when you're on your back foot. I mean, I really fell for him because I've been there myself. I've been in lack I've been in financial situations where I'm compressed and who knows, I may be there again someday. But the point of me bringing up the story was, as I got this message from him, sure I helped him, and I'm gonna have a call. I'm still ongoing. I'm gonna be talking with him and supporting him in the way that I can. But there was a part of me that was saying, Well, you know what, like you the one time he reached out to me was when you wanted something. So my advice for you is, don't be that person. This is why, keeping up the habits of staying in touch with people, making sure you're catching up with them, making sure sending them relevant information, just nurturing your network is going to want to be one of the most powerful investments you can make as a firm owner. All right, so there we've gone over the potential problems. Help I can't hire. We've talked about the possibility of finding the right fit. We've identified that the root problem is, is that you just haven't marketed this position adequately. How do we know? Because you can't hire like marketers, that's what marketers do. Marketers take something that that's no one wants, and they they make it extremely valuable, and they get people to line up and sleep overnight to be able to buy this thing. I mean, we see this all around, right? We see this all around like I was, I was just looking at, you know, we were in the south of France last week for Ryan Willards wedding. You know, Ryan, he also is obviously one of the hosts and my partner here at Business of Architecture and and as we were going to some of these fashion stores, and I was looking like, the French love their fashion, and they're just amazing, incredible, like, incredible fashion sense the arts, like France is the place for the arts Italy as well. I digress. But as I was looking at some of these clothes, I'm like, you know, it's amazing that that these people, these designers, they can take something that's literally a piece of cloth, is literally cotton, or it's some synthetic fabric, and then they can charge 1000s of dollars for it. What's the big gap? There's something, how can you charge 1000s of dollars for something that literally cost maybe $5 to make, maybe $20 to make, and you're charging 1000s of dollars for this thing. What have you considered? It's all about what we call marketing. So what I can say to you is like, if, if people can market water, right? Because you go to the store and there's like, there. Like cheap water and there's expensive water, right? There's cheap wine and there's expensive wine, and if you taste the wine on the water, you know, frankly, they're not that different. Now, those water enthusiasts out there, if you're a water file, you may, you, may, you may, you may get upset at this assertation, right? Come on, Enoch, not all water is critical. I agree. Some water can taste like it has that terrible plastic after taste, as opposed to a nice, cold, minerally enhanced alkaline water. Yeah, those are great, right? But what I can tell you is the price differential on those things is not really rational based upon the taste of the water. So what's the difference? Consider that the difference is marketing, and this is why being able to hire is a marketing exercise. So if you can just simply make this shift and recognize that you know what, it's not that I can't hire, it's that I haven't marketed sufficiently to hire the person that I need. If someone can take something as simple as water and as commonly available as water, and charge many, many multiples of that, and basically sell it to people, then certainly I should be able to take my practice and market it in such a way that we attract the ideal candidate.
Now if you'd like help with this, this is what we help firms do. We help small firms build up processes and systems, and we walk with you side by side to implement the process and systems that help you create a practice that's more sustainable, that's more financially rewarding, and that's more fulfilling for you. As a matter of fact, we have a specific tool around crafting the ideal job role. It's called the delegation roadmap. This is part of what our smart practice framework is for the tool set that we that we give firm owners. But because you're listening to this episode, my team members, they they twisted my arm, and I'm making it available so you can get access to our delegation roadmap tool. If you go to Business of architecture.com, forward, slash delegate, and if you find that valuable, then what I would invite you to do is reach out to us. Let's have a conversation. And if you find yourself in a place where you have bigger aspirations for your firm that you're not currently fulfilling. Schedule a call with someone on my team. Let's have a look at whether you might be a fit for smart practice and smart practice method. With that, I'll remind you. Carpe Diem, goodbye for now and for that tool, this tool we call the delegation roadmap, the problem it solves is that you're not clear exactly on the person you need to hire. You're not clear if you need to hire, you're not clear what things you should take off of your plate. And as a result, you're not able to hire the right person. You're not able to market for that person, and you don't know what fish you're looking for. When you use the delegation roadmap. The delegation roadmap will help you, number one, identify what are the things that right now you need to take off your plate, what are the things that you can easily delegate to someone else, and what's the draw role that would then be combined and created out of that exercise that you can then take to the market, find that right person and move on towards your profitable future. This evening. Sears, reminding you Carpe Diem and goodbye for now, reminder, Business of architecture.com. Forward slash delegate, and that's a wrap. Hey. Enoch Sears here and I have a request, since you are a listener here for the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of to bring it back, to empower you as an architect and a designer, one thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast, simply because it helps other architects stand for more of their value spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here, my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast, and as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit. But more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training you'll discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wished they would have known 20 years ago, and the other 1% well, they just didn't even know that. They didn't know. Head over to iTunes and leave us a review now and now a message from today's sponsor, if you haven't used our cats spec wizard before. And. Now is the time to try it out. Spec wizard is a patented tool that allows you to specify a product in just three steps, all for free and without even registering. Step one, research and find the right products for your project on rcat.com Step two, use the spec wizard tool to select the right products and options. Step three, generate a complete three part CSI or CSC specification based on your selections. Now, maybe you enjoy toiling through long documents, parsing things together and creating a specification, and if that's your case, well, this probably isn't for you, but if you want to get it done in half the time that it used to or even a fraction of that, rcat is your place again. Spec words is free to use and requires zero registration. So to use it, head over to arkat.com, that's a R, C, A t.com, today, and try spec wizard. R cat is a fantastic resource, and one that I counted on when I was actively practicing architecture to help me simplify getting these important specifications right. The views expressed on the show by my guests do not represent those of the host and I make no representation, promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you conquer the world. Carpe Diem.
