It's completely illegal to make someone take required training and not pay them for it.

Heh, heh. I just keep a file documenting all the violations (as well as software licensing violations) for mutual assured destruction in case management ever turns on me in an unacceptable way - so far every job I've left has been on good enough terms that I've never felt like using that information, but it's always in my back pocket.

tduds... you froth at the mouth over everything... maybe you should have been a lawyer... Hey... what do you call a bunch of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean... a good start... ba dump!

We send specific staff out for formal training. Cost a few thousand per head plus a week's salary, but it was 7hr per day, for 5 days. I was the first, something like 7y ago, and we've sent a few more. I do the in-house training, after hours and for pay, when new staff require it.

right. asking everyone in an office regardless of role or experience to spend a day and a half watching online videos is basically just saying "we don't care if this effort succeeds, but at least we can say we tried."

Depending on the state I believe if you are an intern you cannot be considered exempt regardless of how much experience you have.

It can depend on the state, but in most places/cases when the DOL comes into architecture firms in response to complaints they end up ruling that a person with a professional degree can be considered exempt once they have 1-2 years of experience post-graduation. So a part-time or student intern would pretty much never be exempt, an "intern" in the old IDP/AXP sense of someone past graduation but not licensed - now usually known as "designer" or "associate" or something -  often can be legitimately exempt once they get that year or two under their belts. It's much more difficult for firms to defend classifying people without professional degrees as exempt - for them the DOL usually wants 8+ years of experience plus managerial responsibilities.

Interesting. I had a 'discussion' about this several years ago with a firms management. They had their lawyer explain to me that because I had a professional degree I was exempt from OT pay regardless if I was unlicensed. A 1 1/2 years later, after I was licensed the firm gave back pay to our two interns for past unpaid OT. Apparently they where wrong that anyone with a professional degree was exempt. In Colorado an intern architect, regardless of experience cannot be considered a professional in regards to OT as they legally are not able to manage others. This seems to be a combination of the states interpretation on what's considered exempt and an architect.

As I said, it does depend somewhat on the state. Many years ago I worked for a large firm that has offices in several different states, and when a former employee there filed a complaint the federal and state DOLs came in and did interviews and audits in all of the offices, and the results were somewhat different in each. But the general summary is that a professional degree alone is not enough in any state, but 1-2 years experience is in most.

Good information, thanks! I wonder how / if firms in those states will simply stop paying people OT after 1-2 of their architectural internship? Tricky stuff.

It's more often the case that firms will just try not to hire someone with less experience than the minimum for their state, so that they can classify them as exempt from the start, and not have any issues raised about a transition later. That's one of the many reasons that a lot of firms don't want to hire the brand new person with no experience at all.  And it's exactly why a lot of firms will ask leading questions about experience to fairly entry-level applicants, especially in emails or recorded interviews, like "so you have about a year and a half of experience now?" even if they know that's stretching it. It's to document that the applicant represented themselves as having that level of experience, so that if the firm later gets investigated they can point to that as how they determined exempt status. Applicants tend to assume it's better to stretch their answers toward more experience (and it probably is, in the sense that they're more likely to get the job in the first place.)

U.S. Code § 152.Definitions

(12)The term “professional employee” means—

(a)any employee engaged in work (i) predominantly intellectual and varied in character as opposed to routine mental, manual, mechanical, or physical work; (ii) involving the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment in its performance; (iii) of such a character that the output produced or the result accomplished cannot be standardized in relation to a given period of time; (iv) requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study in an institution of higher learning or a hospital, as distinguished from a general academic education or from an apprenticeship or from training in the performance of routine mental, manual, or physical processes; or

(b)any employee, who (i) has completed the courses of specialized intellectual instruction and study described in clause (iv) of paragraph (a), and (ii) is performing related work under the supervision of a professional person to qualify himself to become a professional employee as defined in paragraph (a).

Is it to be expected that a firm would test your software knowledge? Is the job offer based on how well you do on this test? How long does your firm give this person to get up to speed on the software-is it a probationary period?

I'm curious because i've been at a firm that uses archi/soft for a few years and after another year here, I'll hopefully end up at a firm that uses revit and i'm rusty.

I don't know if it's expected. This is the only firm I've ever worked at with a Revit test. Then again I've only worked for five offices in my career.

The firm uses the Revit test to figure out how much you know and if we need to send a person to additional training.  We only give the test to candidates we want to hire. 

Getting a job offer can be decided on how well you do on the Revit test but it depends on what your responsibilities are.  If you're only going to be drafting then yes, knowing Revit is very important.  If you're  going for an architectural position, not so much.  

Ohh makes sense, thanks for the insight!