Hiring

Adding staff feels
good after cuts at
Meyer, Scherer, Rockcastle

They hired three new employees in January at Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, the Minneapolis architecture firm, and in May will start adding two or three a month as new projects get underway.

The firm employs about 40 people now, and the goal is to get enough business to need 60 people within a year, says managing partner Jack Poling. In 2001 the firm’s employee count was in the low 80s, but four rounds of cuts followed.

The biggest of the new projects is a 277,000-square-foot Urban Outfitters corporate campus in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. The national retailer was negotiating with another architect, but those talks foundered. Officials had liked an MS&R project in suburban Philadelphia, and called one of the founding partners late at night around Thanksgiving.

How does it feel to be back in the hiring mode? “Better than you can imagine,” Poling says. He says the increased business, and the downturn before it, is not tied to the economy but rather to internal conditions at the firm.

In 2000 the firm brought on six new owners, only three of whom are still there (including Poling). The focus strayed from winning business, Poling says. The other three departures highlighted the “mistakes we had made” in identifying managers. “We’ve started a new process for assessing the people here,” he says, and grooming them to secure the firm’s future.

As for hiring 15 or so architects, he advertised on the American Institute of Architects Web site and got more than 100 resumes right away, plus many promising architects contact the firm as a matter of course.

Jack Poling, Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle Ltd.: 612.375.0336; jack@msrltd.com; www.msrltd.com