Having been involved in hiring professional site assessment staff for over 20 years, I have always found it challenging to recruit staff that understand our business.

When I started Roth IAMS in 2014, one of my biggest concerns was if I would be able to find enough people to do the work that I knew was available in the market. Beyond hiring people who do similar work for other firms, there are not a lineup of people that are dreaming of becoming a professional site assessor.

We started to look at it as a pipeline issue. When people take architecture, engineering, or technician/technologist programs, they are generally presented with two future career paths, design, or construction.

We are trying to change the narrative and add a third possibility to the mix, professional site assessment or existing building specialization. Through Co-Op programs and hiring new grads fresh out of school we have been able to find some exceptional and passionate young talent that we hope will be with us for decades as they grow their careers beside us as we grow the company.

COVID-19 threw a bit of a monkey wrench into our plans. However, as we are (hopefully) moving out of the pandemic, we are excited to ramp up the marketing and communication plan to students and new graduates, so they know that they have more than two paths to consider.

We recognize that the work that we do is not for everyone. However, we also think that there are many people in higher education today that would benefit from an awareness that they don’t just have to go into design or construction to leverage their education.