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" When your design business is growing, deciding when\u2014and whom\u2014to hire can seem like a job itself. But, according to Matthew Berman, who founded the New York architecture and design firm Workshop/apd with partner Andrew Kotchen, if you&amp;#039;re thinking about adding staff, &amp;quot;you can never do it soon enough.&amp;quot; To get some tips on when and how to staff up, we recently spoke with Berman about how he and Kotchen grew their practice from two guys working out of a cramped apartment to a Manhattan office with about 25 employees.  When to make the first hire You&amp;#039;ll know when you need to bring on help. &amp;quot;As soon as you&amp;#039;re pulling late nights in your own office, and you&amp;#039;re wondering why you can&amp;#039;t go out to see clients, you need to bring somebody on,&amp;quot; says Berman. Although it&amp;#039;s tempting to continue trying to do all of the work yourself, &amp;quot;you&amp;#039;re compromising your ability to get more work,&amp;quot; he adds. &amp;quot;You might be a great designer, but if you don&amp;#039;t understand the business component, you&amp;#039;re sunk.&amp;quot; Whom to hire first For a small design office, Berman recommends hiring generalists\u2014people who can do a bit of everything, from administrative tasks to design work. As the business grows, you can hire more specialized workers such as a dedicated office manager or designers with specific skill sets. There is one exception to the generalist rule: &amp;quot;Get a good bookkeeper right away,&amp;quot; says Berman, who notes that designers can hire one on a freelance basis through a company like Bookkeeping USA. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s nothing worse than going three or four months without sending out invoices because you&amp;#039;re too busy doing the work,&amp;quot; says Berman, who admits that Workshop/apd made that very mistake in the past\u2014resulting in a lapse in payments. A bookkeeper can also help keep you out of some awkward situations. &amp;quot;In residential design, you develop very personal relationships with people, so it can get a little uncomfortable to talk about money and ask why invoices haven&amp;#039;t been paid,&amp;quot; he points out. &amp;quot;But if you have a bookkeeper who is sending invoices out and following up, then it&amp;#039;s not personal.&amp;quot; When to expand &amp;quot;We grow our office very slowly and methodically,&amp;quot; says Berman, who continually tries to find the right balance between meeting deadlines, making time to pursue new clients, and keeping costs manageable. Workshop/apd consistently tracks how much business it has had and how much it has in the pipeline. The firm&amp;#039;s projects can take up to a year and a half to complete, which Bernan says allows him to &amp;quot;project out&amp;quot;\u2014and hire accordingly.   How to spot talent When Workshop/apd needs to hire, Berman and Kotchen post the listing on as many job boards as possible\u2014at design schools, in the New York Times, on Monster.com, and elsewhere. To sort through the resulting flood of r\u00E9sum\u00E9s, they make a preliminary cut by looking at the design of the documents themselves. &amp;quot;We are in a design-related, visual world,&amp;quot; says Berman. &amp;quot;If a designer&amp;#039;s r\u00E9sum\u00E9 does not look well organized or is overdone with too many lines or graphics, it literally gets tossed.&amp;quot; Only after a preliminary review do they look at education, experience, and portfolios, before settling on the candidates to interview. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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