Category Archives: Talent

How to Screw Up a Procurement Job Interview

Recently we published two guest posts from Charles Dominick of Next Level Purchasing on Assessing a Procurement Team’s Skills and Training a Procurement Team, but these were not his first. Nor his only good work. Five years ago we ran this post targetted not at procurement organizations, but procurement professionals who want a better job based on a great post on 5 [Common] Ways to Screw Up a Purchasing Job Interview that he published over on his Purchasing Blog.

Charles’ must read advice indicated that the following WILL screw up your interview:

  • taking an interview late in the processas all future candidates are compared to the one once that candidate is identified
  • not being prepared for the most common interview questionwhich, succinctly, is tell me about yourself

     

  • not distributing eye contactwhen being interviewed by multiple people
  • saying anything negativeas you will not be seen as the proactive team player they want to hire and
  • using slang inappropriatelyas there is no guarantee that an interviewer is going to understand what you mean, and if you say you are hotter than a fox in a forest fire for the job, and the interviewer isn’t familiar with that phrase and a strong PETA advocate …

In addition, the following will also screw up the interview:

  • not dressing appropriatelyeven if the company has a very laid back atmosphere in the workplace, don’t show up in shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals (as they need to know that you can make a good impression in front of a supplier)
  • over-stating your skills, experience, or knowledgeas you will be interviewed by the best and brightest and they will find you out
  • not knowing the market for the common Procurement categoriesif the job is in the electronics component division and you know nothing about the state of the semiconductor market, that’s not going to look good when they ask if you have any ideas to control costs in that market
  • not knowing what the company doesif they are an engineering company that primarily makes electronic components for personal entertainment and the automotive sector, but you only know them for their video game division, that’s not going to look good when they ask how you plan to reduce costs in the automotive division
  • not knowing the competitionand this is doubly damaging if you walk into the offices with the product or logo of direct competitor anywhere on your person.

Organizational Sustentation 60: Human Resources

In our damnation series, we noted how an overly process driven human resources department free of logic and common sense, can ruin the best and worst of plans and inspire your best talent to run to the hills and run for their lives.

Why do human resources (HR) often bring damnation to Procurement? Simply put,

  • They exacerbate talent tightness. (Societal Damnation 51)
  • They drive talent away. (Societal Damnation 50)
  • They think they know what Sourcing is.

HR will insist on owning the talent recruitment process. Now, it’s true that, in most organizations, HR should own the process because most departments wouldn’t know how to go to market for talent if the market came to them and bit them on the thigh like a boghog of NowWhat, but a good Procurement organization knows how to go to market for talent. In fact, a good Procurement organization knows how to go to market for everything the organization needs, and, more importantly a good Procurement organization knows what defines talent to the organization. So a HR department that keeps a Procurement organization at bay that can help is not a good thing.

Especially since the way that many non-best in class HR organizations go about the talent hunt. They blast a poorly written advertisement with a list of requirements no living or dead human can meet across multiple channels, collect hundreds, if not thousands of resumes, and then go through a last-man standing vetting process. They create a ridiculous checklist, a set of arbitrary rules for checking the boxes (because they don’t understand what the boxes are), and then eliminate every resume that doesn’t check every box. They then interview the last men, or women, standing, eliminate those that they feel won’t be a good organizational fit (based on gut instinct), and pass you the candidates that remain. A process guaranteed to eliminate a large number of good candidates, if not all of them.

So what can you do?

1. Define what you really need, as general as possible.

Example. In IT, you need five years doing object oriented software development, with good knowledge of Java, not five years of pure Java. In logistics, it’s big rig training and two years of heavy machinery experience, not two years of commercial sector. Military is just fine. Etc. Don’t make it impossible for the best candidates to even qualify.

2. Help in the selection of resume evaluation technology.

You don’t want dumb “check the box” forms and dumber exact phrase matching technology. If resumes have to be automatically evaluated, you want modern semantic technology that understands coder, developer, and programmer are the same thing and driver and big rig operator are the same thing. You want advanced profile match calculations and not dumb guesstimations.

3. Look at the big picture

Look at references and connections. Yes, references from employees are good, but some are going to recommend everyone who will give them a name just for a chance to get that referral bonus. Connections are even better. If someone is applying for a developer job, how many developer connections are in their business networks, and how many recommend them — even if they work for a competitor. It’s what they know, who can confirm it, and what they want. Do they just want a job, or do they want to make a difference. And if you want someone who will make a difference, that is the person you want. HR probably doesn’t care about any of this, but you do, so stand your ground.

Economic Sustentation 04: Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z

Talent is supposed to be Procurement’s salvation, so why are:

  • Generation X, born between the early 1960s and the early 1980s,
  • Generation Y, born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, and the
  • Generation Z, born between the early 2000s and the present day

an economic damnation? As was discussed in societal damnation 50 on talent, talent is required to keep your supply chains moving. People are required to enter the data to keep the information chain moving, to move the money to keep the financial chain moving, and to move the goods that keep the physical chain moving. And the majority of this talent is a workforce between the ages of 20 and 55, who will have been born between 1960 and 1995, and thus will primarily be composed of Generation X and the Generation Y Millennials, and, as Generation X begins to retire en-masse, Generation Z will begin to enter the workforce. So, not only is talent a damnation, its a damnation that comes in three different flavours.

Generation X

Generation X wants stability, fair pay, a great pension plan, flexible hours, time-off to help good causes, good healthcare, and career development.

It’s a tall order if you’re working for a multi-national organization with fixed benefit programs defined in the 1990s — focussed primarily on privately managed pensions, healthcare, and ten year old pay-scales. This is good for a small percentage of the workforce — but if they have kids or grand-kids, fixed 9 to 5 hours every day, no exception, doesn’t work. If the organization believes the best way to help the community is to just donate cash, and the workforce can’t volunteer their time as well, they’re out. And so on. And some of these requirements are at odds with:

Generation Y

Generation Y wants unique opportunities, work-life balance (and more vacation than the mandatory 2 weeks), social responsibility, and mentoring.

The organization probably has decent unique opportunities for those it feels can handle them, as well as some mentoring for people on the fast-track, but that’s it. Generation Y wants responsibility and trust, and wants the mentoring and education so that it will be worth of the responsibility and trust.

Generation Z

The beginnings of generation Z are just beginning high-school. And whereas Generation Y grew up in the information age, Generation Z is growing up in the communication age where not only is technology ubiquitous, but communication technology is ubiquitous and just about every Generation Z is growing up with a smartphone were they can call, text, and e-mail 24/7. And while we don’t know what they will want from a job perspective, we do know that they will want to be connected to their friends and colleagues 24/7 — just not necessarily for work purposes.

So how do you balance all of these competing requirements? You adapt. And you focus on commitment, not fixed hours. Results, not process. Team, not silos.

And then understand the costs of what your employees are asking for vs. the opportunity costs of not offering a few extra benefits to your employees. For example, how much does an extra week of vacation cost versus the results a top Procurement Pro can bring through additional organization cost savings. Does it really matter if the employee works 9 to 5, especially if they need to negotiate with a supplier half a world away at 11 pm. How much does better healthcare really cost? And what about an extra week to allow your employees to volunteer for good causes? The energy and pride could inspire them to work even harder and achieve even more lofty goals when they return to work.

The reality is, most of what talent will ask for costs very little relative to the value that talent can bring your organization. Especially when a top employee can push a hard 3% savings straight to the bottom line on 10M, 100M, or even 1B of spend. And if we didn’t have the situation where only 1 in 7 American adults were competent in math (as per societal damnation 45 on lack of math competency), the math would be obvious. Give in to every reasonable request, make them happy, and realize savings of 3X to 30X their total fully burdened cost.

The Logistics Industry Talent Shortage Is Its Own Fault

For years we’ve been hearing about the logistics industry worker shortage which, over the years, has had the worker shortage projection increase from a little over 100K when the shortage was first reported as bad in the mid 2000s to 1.4M jobs in 2018 according to a 2014 Fortune article. Now, not all of this is a driver shortage — some of this is a shortage of talent in high tech, analytics, robotics, engineering, seasoned managers, marketers, data analysis, and even human resources — but a significant portion of this shortage *is* a driver shortage.

But why is there a driver shortage, especially when the “un”official U-6 unemployment rate in the US, which includes all unemployed persons as well as persons marginally attached to the labor force plus persons employed part time who would like to be employed full time, is still 9.9%? (If you do the math, that’s over 31M people looking for at least some work … should be easy enough to fill a few hundred thousand driver jobs, right?)

Wrong. The shortage keeps getting worse. But why?

The answer is multi-faceted but one of the big problems is the double-edged sword of perception. How the general populace outside of the logistics industry views logistics and how the workforce inside logistics views the general populace. We will discuss both of these.

The first problem is that, in the US in particular, truck driving is seen as an unglamorous blue-collar job for those who are average, lack drive, and live in a trailer park. It’s not a job for the middle class or those who are part of the respectable community. It’s hard to get truckers if you can’t even get applicants.

But this is only half the problem. The other half is that truckers believe that their brethren should be like them — middle-aged men who like to share crude jokes in old-school truck stops and who fit the stereotype of the trucking industry. If a young women were to apply for the job, she’d have to put up with funny looks and crude, disrespectful jokes, on a daily basis. This is a shame, because now that the job no longer requires brute strength, it can be done by anyone, including a woman — who probably has better time management skills, a calmer head during traffic jams, and less tarnishes on her record (which is a statistical fact).

But, as per this great article over on the BBC on why don’t women become truckers, no matter where you go in the world, it’s the same. A woman driving a lorry gets funny looks and has to listen to unfunny jokes and has to listen to things like wow, I didn’t know women could drive trucks. But a woman can like driving a truck just as much as a man. And a woman who needs a job can be just as willing to drive one as a man. Especially if it was to be again seen as a respectable profession (which first requires people in the industry to treat others with respect).

If the perception improves, the industry can attract more truckers. There might still be a worker shortage, but it would not be nearly as bad if the industry was attracting applicants of both sexes on a regular basis.

Societal Damnation 51: Talent

In our last post, we addressed the perpetual damnation of talent tightness in Supply Management, exacerbated by pinchpenny’s who will pay a dime-a-dozen salesperson an executive salary but won’t pay a Procurement superstar a warehouse wage; deep-pocket competitors who will double every offer you make; and IT departments that would rather spend big money on new gadgets than on systems Procurement talent needs to do their job.

But that’s just one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is the talent themselves. If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on true talent, then the true damnation beings.

Every Generation Wants Something Different.

As per damnation 4 on Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z, at the tip of the iceberg, Generation X wants stability, Generation Y wants unique opportunities, and Generation Z wants to be jacked in. (Not jacked up, jacked in.) Trying to satisfy all of their different desires is like trying to satisfy all of the different requests that will be received on a transatlantic cruise. No easy feat.

Just because they joined, that doesn’t mean they’ll stay.

The average worker today stays at his or her job for 4.4 years, and that number is decreasing all the time. And in some professions, that’s twice as long as the average. If your job isn’t their bees knees, as soon as a competitor comes along with a sweeter offer, your top talent could be out the door.

If they do stay, they’ll want support. And lots of it.

If you promised them training, they’ll expect it. If you promised they could select the new Source to Pay platform, that project better start ASAP and be delivered in a few months. If it was a senior buyer and you promised them a top notch data analyst to give them all the ammunition they needed in negotiation, you better deliver.

And the more support you give, the more they’ll want.

Top talent wants to excel. No matter how good they do, they’ll always want to do better. (That’s why you want them.) But every tool has its limits, and as soon as the limits is reached, they’ll want a better tool. Every technique has a limit to its usefulness, and when that is reached, they’ll want to learn a better technique. And so on. If you deliver, they will deliver, but you have to deliver. And with the CFO, CIO, COO, and maybe even CEO putting policies in place that drag you down every step of the way …

You get the picture. Talent tightness, and an inability to acquire talent, is a damnation, but so is the talent themselves if you manage to get your hands on them. It’s a can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em scenario.