At many A/E firms, attracting and keeping design talent remains a key challenge—especially if your firm is not located in a major geographic market. That was certainly the case with JLG Architects, a 2015 PSMJ Circle of Excellence member.

JLG Architects is a 100-percent employee-owned full-service architecture firm, founded in Grand Forks ND in 1989 by Lonnie Laffen and Gary Johnson.

Today, the firm has grown to nine offices in Grand Forks, Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, Dickinson, Williston, Brookings, Alexandria, and Minneapolis—with nearly 100 full-time employees.

“We were in a growth mode, and were advertising and trying to hire, yet it was almost impossible for us to recruit people,” recalls JLG Architects COO Michelle Mongeon Allen. “First of all, a move to North Dakota— try to make that sell. And, when we could get people who were interested in North Dakota, they weren’t the cream of the crop, and didn’t fit into our culture very well.”

It didn’t take long for JLG management to recognize that not being able to recruit top talent was going to be a constraint to the firm’s growth. “If we can’t get great people, how are we going to grow?” Allen offers. “So we stepped back and asked: What’s ‘worked for us in the past? We started our company with great people.
How did we do it?’ ”

Basically, the firm had a history of hiring graduates from North Dakota State University (NDSU). “They came to work for JLG, and they stayed because we are a great company,” Allen says. “The other great candidate is someone who grew up in North Dakota or in our region, moved out into the world to do things, started having kids, and wants to move home. We absolutely want that top talent who want to move home, for JLG to be their choice.”

In fact, one of JLG strategic goals is to be nothing less than the firm of choice for top talent, and so the firm shifted their recruiting strategy around to focus on and invest in a strong relationship with the architecture program at NDSU in Fargo.

“According to our strategic plan, we would have a growth of 6%, and that 90% of that growth, was going to come from new graduates,” Allen says. “And that we were going to convince all of those new graduates to move to Grand Forks for three years, and we would train them, we would invest in their career development.  We wanted them to build strong peer relationships to get immersed in our culture, and then from there, they would have opportunities for leadership in other offices across our company.”

Although JLG took a big risk and put all of their eggs in one basket, it has paid off hugely, according to Allen. ”We have been hiring the top 10 percent of the graduating class of NDSU for the past three years, she says. “And this will be the first year where we are starting to transition those people out to our other offices.

“This was a huge change for us,” Allen concludes,  “and a recognition that to preserve and build our culture, our greatest success was going to be people who have grown up in the markets that we are trying to move into.”

Want to learn more about how this year's COE members have been gotten where they are today, check out PSMJ's recently released complimentary  ebook Here's How They Did It! Becoming Part Of PSMJ's Circle of Excellence.