a friendly reminder for all you recent graduates (or those looking for work) relative to those upcoming interviews: it's almost never about who you are or what names are on your resume. it isn't about fancy schools or who your studio professor was.
it's about what you've done. what you've actually, genuinely accomplished. and to that end, you're primarily limited by your imagination and motivation.
(from the folks at amazon, via the wsj. yes, it's about mba's, but just replace that with 'MArch or BArch" and it holds up well).
Central to the blog is a long running interest in how we construct practices that enable and promote the kind of work we are all most interested in. From how firms are run, structured, and constructed, the main focus will be on exploring, expanding and demystifying how firms operate. I’ll be interviewing different practices – from startups to nationally recognized firms, bringing to print at least one a month. Our focus will be connecting Archinect readers with the business of practice.
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A friendly counterpoint from a fairly recent graduate:
To tell a recent graduate that “it's almost never about who you are [..] it's about what you've done” shifts the focus from the potential an individual can bring to the practice through his/her personality, ideas, speculation and goals to the sheer services their skills and past work can make available to an employer.
One cannot, and should not dissociate the presence of an individual in “x” schools or “y” firms (the infamous resume names) from the valuable experience earned and the body of work one would have “genuinely accomplished” in those settings – while fostering the unencumbered curiosity, naivety, hope and individuality that fuels truly consequential professional progress.
razvan,
thanks for the observation. and what you've described isn't at odds with the article's main thrust - what they're saying is: prestige alone isn't good enough (something more endemic to mba's than most architects). but prestige isn't the same as doing 'well' (in the good sense) whilst you are in school, nor is professional accomplishment solely relegated to how many bathroom details you picked up one summer. but i do see a difference between solely locating one's efforts inside the walls of academia and an attempt to foster connections outside of it.
I looked at the picture and said "What, architects, really?" MBAs all the way. Thanks for the clarification.
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