Seeking Alternatives – How to become a RLA when the traditional jobs just aren’t out there?

If you can’t get intern time, set yourself up to have an advantage over others when the jobs to become open to hoards of people waiting to fill them.

Many are going to be spending this time getting LEED accredited, or working for landscapers, nurseries, or graphic art related jobs. … those “extras” are going to be a dime a dozen in my opinion.

Two areas that won’t be so widely represented in the volumes of resumes arriving will be actual work experience in civil site plan skills (anything from drafting residential sites to actively participating in layout, grading, retaining wall design, … or just working on a survey crew) and wetlands and/or other regulatory issue related work (it can be as simple as drawing simple planting plans for mitigation to flagging wetlands and representing clients at hearings), Working these two areas also puts you in the same room with potential employers and gets you more aware of what work is going on out there and where the opportunities are greater and where they are weaker.

You may want to try to see if you can get in as a drafter in a civil engineering office (small and local), or on a surveying crew (there will be opportunity to download data and get them into drawings … it begins there and then it can open up into more site drafting), or for an environmental consultant.

I know an ASLA national award winning landscape architect who started out as a receptionist back in the darker days of the 80’s in a surveyor’s office (had GSD MLA).

I worked design/build for the first 3 years out of school. It took a year and a half off the experience requirement since it counted at half time. I didn’t end up needing it though since I waited until I was seven years out to get licensed.

If you want to get a jump on things take all your tests and know that you have the luxury to take your time. Some people can get their test done in 6 months but most take a year or two. So get started with the tests!

Otherwise you could look into working part time in or around the field.

I really appreciated this reminder Andrew. – “I know an ASLA national award winning landscape architect who started out as a receptionist back in the darker days of the 80’s in a surveyor’s office (had GSD MLA).” If we stay in the field we, in all likelyhood, have loooong careers ahead of us. Its hard to remember that when you just want to get started. I also found great inspiration in the Ken Burns Frank Lloyd Wright documentary – he didn’t really get to the work of his life until he was in his late 50’s.

Along with all your other recommendations….good advice!

The key is “some places”–licensure in every state is different.  What is the difference between IL, and the state “back east”? 

I agree with nrschmid! In my opinion, graduating students or entry level candidates should NEVER be allowed to take the exam. Or make the exam more difficult: Take out the multiple answer test of Sections A, B & D and replace it with write-in answers. So there’s no chance, zippo, nada of getting it “luckily” correct. You either know it or not.

And any state, such as Idaho which doesn’t require minimum supervision time under a RLA should be banned from the profession and/or not have that license be recognized as legitimate. Definitely when it comes to reciprocity!