You are in your final year of university, about to submit your last deadline, print all your drawings, and present your project to the tutors. Then you prepare for your degree show display and set off to the opening night to meet potential employers. You start to think who do I want to work for? What practice do I want to work at? What do I want to achieve, do I want to do chartership straight away? A million questions run through your mind, maybe this post can help you.
If you have already been offered a job from placement then great – congratulations! But if you haven’t, that’s ok – don’t be discouraged. The world of landscape architecture is free for you to explore. This post will discuss options available to you as graduate landscape architects looking for work and also my own experience. Personally, I have worked in private, public, and third sectors, so I will be sharing my experience and things to note. Please note this is my personal experience, someone else may have a different experience to me. There is no right or wrong route, my only hope is this can help someone to get a better understanding 🙂
Let’s dive in and talk about the options you have as a graduate landscape architect. The most conventional options are to join a graduate programme with a company. Or apply to graduate/ assistant posts with a practice or the public sector also offers graduate landscape jobs.
The less conventional option, which is what I opted for when I first graduated was to find a job related to landscape architecture, but not working in private consultancy.
Private Sector – Option 1
To elaborate on the conventional approach, working for a private consultancy is one of the most common routes for many landscape architects. You get in from graduate level and you work your way up towards senior level and higher. Many big engineering firms offer a graduate programme usually about 1 or 2 years. The programme will recruit across many disciplines and landscape architecture would be one of them. Many graduate programme will aim to support you in your early career development, they would provide training, plenty of networking opportunities, mentoring, and other opportunities. It’s great to get into one if you want something that focuses on developing your early career in the corporate world.
The application process may vary across different companies. It usually consists of several stages and may last between 10-12 weeks (exact time varies). It starts with an application form, they will assess you and if you meet the criteria you will move on to the second stage which is typically a situational assessment. The test provide scenarios of situations you may face at work and you pick the answer you feel most suitable in that context. It is used to assess your behaviour in the workplace. In my personal experience, they are a little difficult to prepare for, but my advice is to use your professional judgement and common sense to choose the most suitable answer. You might also have to do a numerical assessment as well as the situational judgement test. If you pass the assessment(s), you will be selected to attend an interview. If you have successfully passed the interview you will be accepted into the programme.
A few things to note – graduate programmes are very competitive with a large volume of applicants. Therefore, you most likely will not be provided individual feedback. At the beginning, some of the application questions may be more generic, as they would not be landscape architecture specific, since they are recruiting across multiple disciplines. See if you can speak to someone who has been through graduate programmes and ask them about their experience.
Private Sector – Option 2
The second conventional route is to apply for individual job openings. One of the most important nights for all graduates is the degree show. During your degree show your university would usually invite potential employers to the opening event, where you can meet employers in person and chat through your work and give them your business card. It’s a great opportunity to make yourself known! Make sure you have business cards printed and placed next to your work, so people can take them or you can hand them out.
If you are job hunting online, good places to find landscape jobs would be the Landscape Institute’s job page, LinkedIn, and Google. You can look for jobs in the private and public sectors. Working for the private sector exposes you to a variety of projects ranging in different scales. It’s a good place to start and gain a lot of experience very quickly. The private sector will have more resources to support and mentor you especially if you want to complete the Landscape Institute (LI) Pathway to Chartership Programme (P2C).
Things to note from experience and from talking to other landscape architects who work in the private sector – working overtime is sometimes unavoidable when you have pressing deadlines or unexpected changes to designs. Some companies will pay you overtime some might not. However, as a graduate, you are not expected to work overtime. Although, I would say that is dependent on the workload and company. I certainly knew of graduates who were working a lot of hours. My advice is to always speak up if things are getting too much for you, don’t be afraid because you feel you are a graduate and you need to work hard to prove yourself. A good employer should always listen to their staff and look for ways to relieve the pressure. Alternatively, if you feel you are not getting challenged enough or want to work on specific projects for experience speak to your senior about it.
Public Sector
Working in the public sector is a little different to private. The role may be more influential including in appraising design proposals and advising on the design and construction of a project like the role of a landscape officer. You might be a project manager, conducting assessments, studies, or surveys. You may be tasked with producing plans and drawings. There would be engagements with stakeholders, the public, or decision-makers. Your work title may not exactly be a landscape architect, as your skills and knowledge apply to a range of built environment roles. For example, green spaces, landscape regeneration, urban design, and many more.
I have learned from my experience that the public sector quite often has fewer resources to support a junior. Therefore, most jobs would require you to have a good few years of experience in the criteria. They usually take people who have worked in different places and can bring in their expertise instead of nurturing you. Having said that, not all public sector jobs require experience some places will take on graduates if they have the resources. It’s a case of keeping an eye out for job openings.
Third Sector
My first full-time job was working in an active travel charity, that provide funding for active travel infrastructure projects. I was part of a team that was working to promote/ deliver better infrastructure for sustainable travel and the strategic vision of liveable neighbourhoods. I also worked closely with local authorities to help deliver projects and assist with designs and community engagements.
Active travel is a very niche area and it is a part of landscape architecture. However, my colleagues were not landscape architects or know little to nothing about it. Over the 2 years, I learned a lot about best practices for active travel design, adapting to site constraints, behaviour change, and many more. Simultaneously, I was trying to promote landscape and bring attention to the importance of incorporating landscape design and placemaking into schemes. I was also trying to share knowledge of landscape architecture to my colleagues and the external people I worked with.
Working for a charity is similar to working in the public sector (at least in my experience anyway). You get to meet a lot of people from all sorts of backgrounds and learn from them. Everyone is very passionate about what they do and wants to make a difference. You also work towards a bigger vision/ goal, for example, the charity works on behalf of Transport Scotland and helps to deliver projects to meet the big goals e.g. Net zero and liveable neighbourhood. Similar to working in the public sector, the work/ projects you do feed into a strategic vision of what the government wants to achieve.
In my experience, working in the third sector is a very different environment to the private. It is less competitive, and you can progress at your own pace. The pace can be slower (though not always) and sometimes you do have to rely on being proactive and self-disciplined if you want to achieve something. There will be a work-life balance. In terms of projects variety, depending where you are you maybe exposed to a big variety or not so much. It is also good to note sometimes projects are at risk of stalling due to changes in the political environment, funding, and many other factors in comparison to private sector projects.
Give yourself time and seek advice
I am sure you are all aware that settling into a graduate post will take time. You will also have your placement experience to reference. I also want to highlight that it takes time to find the right employer that suits you. So it’s ok if you want to change jobs or company after some time. Some people find the right employer very soon, for others it may take a bit longer and a few more tries.
Nowadays, professionals move around often within a reasonable time scale, and it’s not always a bad thing. To be clear, I am not telling you to change jobs 3 times in 6 months, that’s probably not a wise thing to do! (But given unexpected circumstances it might happen to someone). From speaking to professionals in and outside of the field, moving around every 3-5 years nowadays is pretty normal. It’s becoming less often that people stay in the same job for 20/ 30 years. That doesn’t mean you have to move around if you don’t want to. It all dependents on what you want as an individual and how you want to progress your career. The bottom line is to do what is right for you and seek advice when you need it. A thing I do when I feel lost in my career is to speak to old colleagues from a previous job or an old line manager. They know you well and they may be able to give you some pointers. Give yourself time to explore options and don’t give up!
If you are looking for advice on applying for jobs, I have previously written about looking for my placement experience in this post here. It talks about how to apply, go through the interview stage, and get an offer. Please check that out as the process of applying for graduate posts will be very similar.
Best of luck to those looking for a job in the landscape architecture field, I hope it all goes well! 😀 I hope this post was useful and if you have any questions feel free to reach out, click on the contact page and drop me a message. I would love to hear from you.
If you want to be the first to know about a new post, follow me @landsnplants on Instagram.