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Looking for a new job is stressful regardless of where you are in your career. Job hunting never really gets easier and, for architects, this is compounded by the fact that we need so much more than simply just a résumé (i.e. portfolios and work samples). So why would we make this task harder than it really needs to be. If you take a few things into consideration, putting together an impressive résumé package should be relatively easy. The key is doing a little work up-front to ensure that you won’t be scrambling later.

There are three necessary components to any young architect’s resume package: the résumé, work samples, and actual sheet sets that you have compiled in your professional experience. In this post I will focus on the résumé. We all know what a résumé is and what it should look like. So going into the details of how to set one up is a little redundant. However, résumés can seem very ominous to a young professional, especially with limited work experience. Here are ways to make the résumé process a fairly painless one.

1. Choose a résumé format and continue to add to it as you progress in your career
2. Scan over your timesheets and IDP information to find interesting and specific job tasks you have experience in.
3. Keep it simple and omit the unnecessary things.

The first step is harder than one may think. Because we are in a design profession, we are always apt to change the look and format of things; we can’t help it because that is how we were taught. But choosing a standard format is imperative so that you don’t waste time mulling over the mundane details.  Once you have established your template, make sure that it is kept up to date. That includes adding more information or even taking information away as it becomes less important to your résumé. The one rule that should be maintained is to keep the document to a one page maximum. Also, your references should not be included on your page because it simply takes up space and is not needed before your first interview. Keep your references up to date on a separate page of the document and bring it to your interviews.

The next step is the task of actually sitting down and listing what you have experience in. This means what skills, drawings, or filing related processes that you have been exposed to. It’s easy to have spent six months in a position and have a very limited idea to what you have actually done. Was this six months a waste? If you look back on timesheets or drawing sets you have worked on, you will find that it was not. For the sake of your résumé, systematically track through your time sheets and projects to make a list of duties you have performed. You will see that the list is long and detailed making it a great place to fish when résumé building.

 This experiment is especially good for young professionals who may have trouble filling up their one page. If you can fill the empty space up with duties that an employer will recognize and relate to, your resume will stand out more. An important thing to document is any experience you have had with city agencies like the Department of Buildings or City Planning. If a young candidate has had experience dealing with these entities, it can also set them apart.

I learned that this was effective while I was looking for my first job with a large firm.  I had only a small amount of experience at a much smaller firm doing primarily small-scale residential work. This limited my exposure to many project types and I did not have much to offer to firms that worked on larger projects in terms of practical experience. However, I also lived a few blocks away from my town’s Department of Buildings and would file all of my firm’s projects in the mornings before I would catch the train to work. This experience was invaluable, specifically regarding my résumé. At my first interview, this was brought up and it turned out that many of their experienced project managers had not even been to city hall to file documents (due to the heavy use of expeditors in large offices). I was offered a job on the spot and even negotiated a higher salary.

The key here is to be able to identify experiences you have had already and expound upon them. Having a working knowledge of specific processes increases your marketability.

If you have had done a substantial amount of work on one specific project, this is also a place to list the project and your duties on the project. Particularly if the project has made any local or regional news in the architecture community, this can be an effective tool. Often people will spend years working on only one project. While this may not make the candidate well versed in different building typologies, it certainly gives them a great understanding of the intricacies behind taking a project from infancy to completion.

The last step is keeping it simple. As you move forward through firms, your résumé can focus on more salient points and begin to omit things like experiences with city agencies and general project phases. These will already be expected after a few years of experience and won’t set you apart anymore. At this stage, identifying your roles in the project team should be enough.

Keeping it simple also means that you should focus the résumé more towards your professional experiences and away from personal interests and educational experience. It is true that work and honors achieved during your educational experience will help you get your first or second job, but it becomes exponentially less important each year you are a professional. Educational merits will still have importance if you decide to go to grad school or can be a talking point during interviews.

With these things in mind, you should be able to keep an updated professional resume. During your job hunt, your résumé should be the least of your worries. It is simply a list of things you have already done and cannot really change drastically overnight. So put yourself in a position where you don’t have to drastically change it.