Advice for Emerging Professionals

I have been asking seasoned builders, designers, and architects what advice they give to emerging professionals about how to advance their careers in our traditional building industry. In our Building Tradition podcast interview, David Heit AIA NCARB of Civium Architects gave me a particularly good answer.

This topic is timely because there is a demographic shift taking place in business. Baby boomer principals are handing the reins to their millennial employees and partners. I haven’t heard of many boomers who want to retire from their architecture, design, or construction firm completely, but many are at an age where they’d like to downshift and let their younger and emerging teammates carry the load.

David Heit runs his own architecture firm in Topeka, Kansas, specializing in ecclesiastical design, campus master plans, and historic restoration/renovation. He also teaches at Benedictine College and mentor’s interns at his firm. He isn’t on the verge of retirement, but he has emerging professionals working for him to whom he gives this advice:

There is a lot to learn. You won’t be a success overnight. Yes, you have an architectural degree from a good school, but school doesn’t teach you everything. On-the-job learning takes time.

Some assignments you get might be menial. Take them on. Everything we do, big and small, teaches us something. What we learn on today’s project we can apply to solving problems on the next project.

Get connected to what’s going on around you, in the office and in the field. Listen! Ask questions. Eavesdrop on other architect’s conversations in the office. Listen to the project manager who is talking on the phone with the jobsite superintendent.

Listen very carefully to clients and to how your associates talk with clients. You will learn a lot through osmosis if you pay attention to what’s around you.

Look at buildings in other places. Understand contextual design. Draw what you see. Never stop sketching. Keep a sketchbook.

You can learn from others at different firms. Don’t be a job hopper but expose yourself to new ways of doing and seeing things.

I have asked my emerging professional, traditional buildingfriends, “how come everyone thinks young people feel “entitled?” What does “entitled” mean? The answer I get is that young professionals want a voice. They want to be heard. And they want to understand “why” we do the things we do. I think this is a fair request, especially since “young” professionals have so much more access to information now. Command and control management is a turn-off for young, emerging professionals.

In my spare time I coach Peewee ice hockey to eleven- and twelve-year-olds. In coaching clinics, we are told that young people spend so much time on computer screens and I phones,and wearing earbuds, that they have lost their awareness of their surroundings, their peripheral vision.

“Head on a swivel” I tell the players. Look around you. Know where you are and what others are doing around you. Like Peewee ice hockey, the same goes for emerging professionals in design and construction.