"Relaxed and Confident" - Alex Kibble, Tanner Kibble Denton Architects

What CV advice would you give to a candidate?

I would tell people to put themselves into their CV in a creative way. We work in a creative industry and the CV should really reflect that. I encourage candidates to try and find a balance between words and images, sometimes a beautiful image will say much more than ten pages of words. I’m also interested in what you do outside of work because it tells me a little bit more about you as a person.  

What makes a candidate stand out?  

The very best impression is to be relaxed and confident. You’ve got the interview and you don’t have to prove anything, if you can have a nice, relaxed conversation with me, then it means we’re actually able to form a relationship that goes into the beginnings of a potential job. My advice would be to just be relaxed, be confident, and tell me about you as a person. 

What type of portfolio do you prefer to receive? 

I still like a hardcopy but I’m much more used to digital and you can see things in a different way with the digital portfolio and you can swipe through with much greater ease. I do like to see tangible drawings as well, I think sometimes candidates go a little bit too far with the digital image and we don’t actually get to see the real stuff and what they’ve actually done, so don’t forget that there’s more to it than just the glossy image. 

How would you recommend people dress for an interview?

Most people get it right, they come with a sort of relaxed, casual approach. We’re architects, not bankers, so don’t come wearing a suit. If a candidate comes wearing a suit you feel that there’s a sort of anxiousness and there’s an awkwardness about it, so just say something about your style. 

What questions should people ask? 

Try to go a little further than just repeating back to us what’s in our own website, we know what’s in our website. Try to say something about what your take on the work we do is, that really demonstrates that you’ve thought about why it is that you want an interview with us. It’s important try to make it a bit more of a personal connection. 

I think some other questions that are fairly common are things about culture, about what kind of office we are, and that’s another way of demonstrating that you’re a real person and you’ve thought about who it is that you want to come and work for. 

Tell us something interesting people might not know about your practice? 

We are probably about 55% women to 45% men, so it’s not a very common gender balance. In a way I think that also defines us, we have to be very flexible, we’re very friendly to family life and allow that modern take on work-life balance.