AB Mukadam on The Hard Truth: Thriving in a Difficult Market Together (2025)
Graduating from university and stepping into practice has always felt like a leap of faith. Nowadays it can feel less like a leap and more like a scramble. If that resonates, you’re not alone and you’re certainly not imagining it.
Our ‘Preparing for Practice’ event with RIBA West Midlands was honest, positive and grounded. Despite the buzz of entering the profession, graduates there also expressed a shared understanding of the pressure they are under right now. This article follows on from that event, laying the grounds of what’s going on, why it’s happening and how the BAA is providing a stepping stone into practice.
There are several economic factors influencing the graduate entry market right now. It’s not easy to talk about, not to be disheartening, but because clarity is more useful than uncertainty.
So here it is:
High interest rates and Gateway 2 hold-ups have squeezed development finance, pricing some developers out of the market and causing others to put major projects on hold. In turn, many practices (especially smaller ones) are recruiting far more cautiously than they have been in previous years. In addition, the increases in National Insurance contributions and the National Living Wage, now £12.71 per hour (or more if you’re a Living Wage accredited employer) has had a serious impact on the running costs of practices. For smaller firms in particular, the investment required to take on and train a graduate can be difficult to justify against day-to-day fee-earning pressures. What this means is that there is currently a bottleneck at Part 1 and Part 2 level, which says nothing about the quality of graduates entering the profession but is down to a structural issue within the job market.
Then there’s the ‘experience’ element, a catch-22 that many of you will recognise. Practices are seeking experienced applicants whilst remaining hesitant to take on early-career professionals without demonstrable industry experience. You need the job to get the experience, but the experience to get the job. It’s a frustrating cycle, and one the profession needs to take more accountability for.
Recent surveys suggest nearly 45% of early-career professionals cite limited job opportunities as a major concern. Alongside that, there’s a growing distance between the work done in academia and what practices need on day one: technical proficiency, BIM fluency, an understanding of the Building Safety Act, and the ability to contribute pragmatically from the outset.
This isn’t a criticism of architectural education. It’s a reflection of how quickly the profession’s practical demands are evolving. In such a competitive market, practices aren’t just looking for talented designers anymore, they are looking for people who can add value across multiple areas e.g. those who understand AI-assisted workflows and sustainability principles, those who can navigate regulatory frameworks, and those who can bring both creative and technical capability to the table, all learnable skills.
The door to the profession may feel like it’s only half-open right now. Our job is to help you widen participation and bridge the gap where possible.
Our ‘Preparing for Practice’ event brought together RIBA Journal Rising Stars, the RIBA President, and Ken Shuttleworth of MAKE Architects to offer honest perspective, restore a sense of possibility, and demonstrate the breadth of transferable skills graduates already hold. Talks were followed by one-to-one opportunities with employers and Senior Architects from leading Birmingham practices, building the kind of connections that actually help develop things.
Those connections matter more than ever. Research suggests around 70% of roles are filled through networks and word of mouth, rather than formal job listings. Our events exist to make you a known and trusted presence among the people shaping this city’s built environment.
We’re also encouraging graduates to think more expansively about their own identity. You are not simply an ‘Architectural Assistant’ waiting for a practice to take a chance on you. You are a spatial thinker, a sustainability advocate, and multi-media user, to name a few.
Birmingham is still a city with serious ambition. Ongoing urban regeneration in areas such as the Smithfield Masterplan and impact on adjacent areas, Birmingham’s Central Heart and major redevelopments in Solihull and surrounding areas will require skilled Architects to see them through to 2045 and beyond. The talent being developed right now, in studios, in part-time roles, through self-directed learning, will be central to this work.
The profession is recalibrating, not retreating. The climb may be steeper than expected, but the designers who find their footing in a market like this tend to be the most resilient and adaptable of their generation.
As summer is here, students enter a new chapter in their educational journeys. Matthew Westley,
As a second-year architecture student at the time, watching the events of the Grenfell Tower
Graduating from university and stepping into practice has always felt like a leap of faith.