After a challenging year in 2024, dropping interest rates and stabilized commercial property values are giving architecture firms new reasons to be optimistic as they look forward. Data from the AIA/Deltek Architecture Business Index (ABI) shows that about 40% of firms project revenue gains of 5% or more in 2025. The outlook is particularly positive for large firms and institutional design firms, driven by a sharp increase in manufacturing construction spending over the past three years.

For many firms, an increase in business means a growing need for architecture talent acquisition. Recruiting top architects can be a major challenge in the competitive design hiring landscape, with many firms competing for the same small pool of skilled designers, project managers, and technical professionals.

Developing a strong architectural practice employer brand is one effective way to attract architects to your firm. Read on to learn more about what defines an employer brand, why it’s a key part of an effective architecture recruitment strategy, and how to develop and promote your brand to find and hire the right people.

What is employer branding (and why does it matter in architecture?)

In short, an employer brand is how a company is perceived as a place to work by current employees, job seekers, and the talent market at large. It answers the question “Why would someone want to work here instead of with another company?”

Conceptually, an employer brand is similar to a firm brand, and these two aspects of your architecture firm reputation should be aligned. However, they also differ on a few key points. Most obviously, they’re different in their audience and focus. Where a firm brand aims to attract and retain the right clients, an employer brand focuses on design professional engagement. The messaging is also usually slightly different. There are often common points of reference, such as the architecture firm values and design philosophy, but in the employer brand these are framed from the standpoint of how they impact the workplace culture and career growth of employees.

In creative industries like architecture, employer branding is especially critical.  For one thing, architecture firm differentiation often comes down to its people. Delivering high-quality, innovative designs means first hiring architects with the skills to develop them. A strong designer talent pipeline is also highly beneficial for filling specialized roles, which can have a long recruitment timeline and require skills that aren’t broadly available in the talent market.

Very often, candidates are drawn to the architecture firm culture and purpose as much as they are by practical considerations like salary and benefits. Factors like the potential for career development and how the firm ensures a healthy work-life balance for their teams can also have a major influence on both recruiting and retaining architecture employees. This makes employer branding a key strategy for how architecture firms can stand out to top talent.

Key elements of a compelling architecture firm employer brand

Now that you understand the big-picture definition of employer branding for architecture firms, let’s go a bit more granular and dig into the components that are often involved in building one. When crafting your employer brand in the architecture industry, focus on areas such as:

Employer Value Proposition

Your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) is a clear statement of what your firm offers employees in exchange for their skills and contributions to your workplace. This includes tangible things like the salary and benefits you offer or the types of projects the design team works on, as well as intangible things like the company values or how it ensures employees have a sense of purpose.

A strong EVP can give your firm a design talent competitive advantage by clarifying exactly why they should choose your firm over others. This is particularly important in talent recruitment for small architecture firms, who often lack the reputation or prominent projects to be considered as a potential employer otherwise. To best leverage it for recruiting architecture professionals, make sure it’s prominently featured on your careers page and described in clear, concise phrases that will resonate with job seekers.

Mission and design philosophy

A key pillar of design firm talent attraction is showing job seekers they will be able to work on projects that excite them and give them a sense of fulfillment. Highlighting your firm’s core purpose and approach to design helps you to attract architects who share this personal design ethos. This supports stronger architecture talent retention as well as design team recruitment, because you can be more confident the people you hire are aligned to your firm’s philosophy.

Case studies of real projects can be especially effective for conveying your mission and design philosophy to candidates. Choose past projects that best exemplify your core identity and values as a firm, then describe it along with the client’s impact and the team who worked on it.

Team culture

You can think of workplace culture in architecture firms as the day-to-day lived experience of your employees. It includes things like your level of collaboration, your communication style, and your firm’s approach to things like problem solving, leadership, and employee recognition.

Firm culture is critical for recruitment in the architecture industry, where projects are often long and work is team focused. Job seekers want to know that they’ll belong on your team and have a voice in design decisions. Social media is an excellent place to showcase the employee experience in architecture firms. Use content like behind-the-scenes tours and employee testimonials to help job seekers envision themselves as a member of your team.

Career development

Architecture career development encompasses everything that helps employees grow professionally. This can include internal offerings like mentoring and project leadership opportunities, as well as external growth drivers like licensure support or sponsorship for conferences, continuing education, and design competitions.

Firms that invest in the ongoing development of their teams tend to be magnets for ambitious talent. This makes highlighting how you support employee growth one of the top employer branding strategies for design studios. Make it clear to job seekers that joining your firm isn’t just a job but rather a pathway to building a future. You can do this through featuring real employee growth stories, or by visually charting out career paths on your careers page.

Steps for building an employer brand for architects

The sections above included some tips for how to attract top architecture talent through employer branding. Now, let’s dig deeper into the practical steps a firm can take to develop and promote their employer brand effectively.

1. Audit your current employer brand

Every employer has a brand, even if they haven’t intentionally shaped it. This is formed by how job seekers currently perceive your company—and that’s an important thing to know before you start implementing changes.

A two-pronged approach is best to get a clear picture of your current brand. Start by talking to your current team to find out what they value in a workplace and what attracted them to your company. Next, get a sense for your external perception by reading Glassdoor reviews, assessing your LinkedIn presence, and searching for mentions of your firm in career-related online content.

2. Define your Employer Value Proposition

Based on what you hear from employees and your core identity as a firm, you can determine what your key strengths are as an employer. This will often include things like your level of innovation, meaningful projects you work on, career growth opportunities, work-life balance, and the workplace culture.

One thing to keep in mind, especially for larger firms, is that your EVP may not be the same for every role. The key things you should emphasize in architecture leadership recruitment may be different than how you sell yourself to emerging designers.

3. Align your brand with the candidate experience

The architect candidate experience is a job seeker’s first hands-on introduction to your firm. If it feels mismatched to the brand they saw on your site, this will come across as inauthentic and could drive them out of your pipeline. For instance, if your brand is built on collaboration and innovation, a cold and bureaucratic interview process will feel at odds with this promise.

Review every step of the candidate journey to verify that it reflects your brand. This includes the job posting and application form, as well as how recruiters communicate with candidates and the steps in the interview process, all the way through to the offer stage and onboarding.

4. Use your online presence to spotlight your culture and brand

This is the step where you need to think about how to market your architecture firm to job seekers. Since architecture is a visual profession, you want your branding assets to be aesthetically pleasing and have strong visual storytelling, along with conveying the details of your studio.

You can start by refreshing the careers page on your website (or creating one, if you haven’t yet). Use your website, blog, or social media channels to share employee testimonials, site visits, team celebrations, or “day in the life” walkthroughs. While text and images can be effective, short videos are an especially powerful content format to give job seekers a true sense of what it’s like to work for you.

5. Encourage current employees to be brand ambassadors

No one can speak to the lived experience of working for your firm with the same authenticity as your current team. Leveraging their perspective and networks is among the most effective architecture recruitment strategies, lending an automatic air of credibility to the employer brand you promote on your official channels.

This can start by featuring content from your team on your website and social media. Include junior and mid-level as well as senior staff in this to show candidates that people thrive at all career stages with your firm. Encourage the team to create their own content, too, like posting about project milestones or leaving reviews on sites like Glassdoor. Finally, don’t forget the in-person side of branding. Send your employees to represent your firm at industry events, and involve them in outreach to schools or job fairs.

Branding your firm to attract top-tier candidates

Top architecture talent isn’t just drawn to salaries. They want to work for firms that will invest in their development, are aligned with their values and design philosophy, and allow them to work on meaningful projects that give them a sense of purpose.

Developing a strong employer brand is how you show job seekers that you’ll deliver on these points, and this is what puts it among the most effective architectural hiring best practices. When you invest in employer branding, it will have both an immediate and lasting impact on your ability to recruit the right talent for your team.