Do We Place Too Much Emphasis on Architecture Portfolios?

I get asked about resumes and portfolios A LOT, and so I’ve created resources to help architecture students and graduates perfect them. But sometimes I think we place too much emphasis on them, and I want to provide some perspective in the format of five real-life examples.

Case and point; Austin Maynard advertised a portfolio-free position this week.

The post reads:

Often the best people don’t have an up to date CV, and that’s because they have been very busy doing great work for their employer. If that describes you and you are really great at what you do, and thinking about a change of scenery to a great office, with a great culture, then send us an email and we’ll have a chat.

1. It has been years since we actively sought a new team member.
2. Today is one of those very rare moments, when a job is available in our studio.
3. We are looking for someone SMART, with solid ALL-ROUND EXPERIENCE. That said, we are always keen to hear from talented, hardworking new grads too.
4. We LOVE giving overworked and under appreciated talent (you know who you are) a new home and a healthier environment.
5. Single and multi residential experience.
6. Vectorworks experience is a bonus, but not a necessity.
7. Gender balance is very important to us (“Men apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of them” - Harvard Business Review)
8. We are strictly a 9 to 5.30 office. #worksmartnothard.
9. Read Andrew’s rant about work life balance via Parlour.org.au.
10. Send us something via hello@maynardarchitects.com

What Austin Maynard are putting out here is simply an honest reflection of how the industry often works. Your experience, reputation, attitude, skills and connections are often things that can be leveraged and demonstrated by means other than a portfolio.

Let’s look at some examples.

Case two: my own career.

My very first job came about because I chose to interview a local architect for a university project. We met for coffee and I conducted the interview, and as we got chatting I mentioned that I was looking for a job. I was only in my second year - I didn’t really have much to put in a portfolio. What this architect was looking for was potential; someone who was organised, could communicate well and could take initiative. I had demonstrated all of these things through my simple university project endeavour, so a few weeks later he contacted me with a part-time job opportunity. No portfolio was needed.

Case three: the mature-age student.

I recently hired a student to help me out with some minor tasks in my membership platform, The Architect Project. I opened the opportunity to all current members, and because part of the position was to conduct guest interviews when I was having a baby, the only application criteria were to send a short video telling me about themselves and why they felt they would be a good fit for the job. They also had to attach a basic resume, but no portfolio was required.

I hired a second-year student who had decided to study architecture as a change from a successful career in marketing. As a marketing expert, I have no doubt that he knew exactly how to hit the nail on the head; he knew I had limited time and just needed to see the relevant bits, so a one-page resume summarised his background and any relevant skills I might be interested in, the short video made it clear that he was capable of the job, and some further links showed me an example of previous interviews. Incidentally and amazingly, this person also told me that prior to this he had never had to produce a resume for the 10 or so jobs he’d had throughout his career.

Now I can hear you saying, “sure, but this wasn’t an architecture job.” Correct… but this same person has just landed their first architecture job, once again with no portfolio. He’s taken up the opportunity for a work placement through an intern program run by his university, and in his first week has had discussions with the Director about transitioning to a permanent position. Again, demonstrating your skills is far more effective than claiming them on a piece of paper that sits in a pile with similar bits of paper from other candidates.

Stephen Drew, architecture employment expert, from The Architecture Social said in a presentation “the best way to stand out from the crowd is to beat the crowd".

An employer will nearly always be tempted to take the good-enough candidate that they already know, instead of spending hours screening and interviewing a pile of applicants to find the best fit.

I’ll also note that I called this point ‘the mature-age student’ for a reason. I’ve been contacted by several mature age students who are worried that employers will prefer to hire younger applicants who are more tech-savvy and have more working years ahead of them. In my experience, the opposite is more common; an employer will value the life experience and skills from your past very highly, and the example of the individual above shows this.

Case four: turn challenges into opportunities.

Last year I was contacted by a job-seeking graduate who had decided to re-frame his own job-seeking challenges into an opportunity by interviewing architects and graduates for their advice on breaking into architecture. He approached me with an interest in publishing these articles, and after seeing how well they were constructed, I was very keen to share them as high-quality content for my own audience. You can read the first ‘Breaking Into Architecture’ interview with Daniel Moore here.

When I was then contacted by Wall Street International online magazine with an offer to write for them, I immediately thought of Chaim and put them in touch with each other. Chaim now has a paid side-gig in architecture journalism and you can read his first article published by WSI here.

I love this example so much because it’s a perfect demonstration of assessing your challenges and interests and then taking initiative in order to grow yourself as an individual and create connections and opportunities along the way.

What if journalism isn’t your thing? Another great example I’ve heard of came from a graduate who chose a topic of interest for her postgraduate research project and then reached out to relevant firms to ask if she could visit them one lunchtime to share her findings. What a great win-win; the firms potentially learn something new and have a productive social lunch, while the graduate builds great relationships with relevant people, as well as receiving feedback (informal mentoring).

Case five: the head-hunt.

The classic example of portfolio-free hiring is the head-hunt. This term is used to describe an employer identifying and approaching someone with a potential offer. It can sound underhanded, but it’s often as simple as one person expressing a need for staff to another person who might already be looking for a new position.

The head-hunt sounds like something that would only happen amongst people already working in the industry, but rest assured, it is alive and well in the student scene. How many students do you know who have been offered a job by a tutor or guest juror at University? It’s not a coincidence. I, myself, have requested to sit on the juries of certain year levels to investigate students with potential and approach them with an interview opportunity, and I know I’m definitely not alone.

In fact, half of the design team at my workplace have been hired as the result of a direct invitation to apply either through me approaching them after viewing their work or by asking for referrals from other architects who were tutoring that semester. Admittedly, all of them had a portfolio to present but had they explained to me that they didn’t have a current portfolio and instead put together a collection of links to key presentations, or compiled a simple summary of their work, we still would have met with them and likely hired them because half the job was done already by viewing their work/interactions/communication skills or having a good referral from a trusted source.

So how important is an architecture portfolio?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still worthwhile having a portfolio to demonstrate your work and communication/presentation skills, but sometimes I think we place too much emphasis on them. If you’re spending hours converting your portfolio to the third layout you’ve tried, or fussing over re-rendering and photoshopping all of the images to make a small difference, it’s worth weighing up whether that time would be more effectively spent networking, pursuing interests, developing your soft-skills, finding a mentor, and volunteering.

Maybe your time is better spent ‘beating the crowd’ rather than ‘competing with the crowd’.

Looking for more?
Read how I got my other jobs
Essential Books for Emerging Architects
My book: 101 Things I Didn’t Learn in Architecture School