“TIDLIC”: Things I didn’t learn in college.

There are SO many things that I do each week that I had no clue I would be doing when I was studying design in college. I have been wanting to come up with a way that I could capture them for my record and maybe for others to get a hint before they step full force into the career world. As I thought of a catchy phrase or acronym to title it I came up with TIDLIC…inventive, huh? But then I did some searching and found that I wasn’t so cleaver after all and that there is an actual website with that domain name. Oh well, we are just going to go with it…

This week and especially Friday I spent a lot of time talking about people and project forecasting.  Who knew on those – “… deadline tomorrow!… I am not even close to ready… I am so exhausted…I just got glue all over my finish presentation” – all-nighters, that I would spend a good amount of time talking about getting the right people on the “right bus” for the company and the projects we facilitate. Besides reviewing resumes weekly that come into the office, I also help evaluate when we need new interior designers and for which projects. Lately we have started to see a flux with the economy again and more work is coming in. With that our designers have been stretched and staffing each project with the needs they have can be quite the juggling act. As an office we don’t want to get into a hiring and firing mode; hiring when there is a small spike and then immediately letting them go when it goes back to normal. FFKR is a great company to work for because of that. The employees are deeply valued and hiring isn’t taken lightly. That said it is a really hard thing to do when you work for the building industry. We are hired to design and build a building…when that is done; we are out of a job. Period. So our blessing and curse is to keep that going and try to overlap the projects to keep staff busy.

When it comes to staffing a project much communication happens before we actually pull the trigger to bring in some people to interview. This communication and planning has been happening this week. Though it can take time getting all parties on the same page,  I actually really like being a part of it. It’s like playing Rummikub…Do you know that game?

An 80’s photo of the game??

It’s about placing all the individual tiles…moving this tile here in this numerical grouping so this colored tile can be played there…placing the right tile with the right grouping, at the right time.  I have always liked that game and now I see how closely my small role in Human Resources is similar to it.

…But it is so not what I thought about on those deadline all nighters.