Category Archives: Talent

Why Can’t I Find Top Supply Management Talent?

The simple answer: you’re looking for a resource that is so rare it may not even exist! And I’m not the only one who thinks so. After talking with a number of thought leaders at the Hackett Best Practices conference, it’s become clear that this is the most common reason Supply Management organizations can’t find talent. (Note that this is only the case with respect to “find”. There are a number of reasons a Supply Management organization can’t hire talent.)

As Supply Management has become more and more challenging, the average reaction of a supply management organization has been to continually augment the job description of a supply manager to the point where the individual is expected to not only be a jack of all trades but master of all. This has resulted in a search for senior buyers with an eclectic collection of skills and experience so rare that you can probably count the number of global supply professionals around the globe that make the grade. For example, whereas the average job description for a senior buyer ten years ago might have looked like:

  • good communication skills
  • college degree
  • negotiation experience
  • buying experience in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and energy
  • some supervisory experience

Today’s average job description for a senior buyer looks like:

  • great communication skills
  • excellent writing skills
  • master’s degree with 10 years experience, PhD preferred
  • expert in negotiations with a global supply base
  • buying experience in manufactured goods, services, IT & Telecommunications, legal, marketing, and temporary labour
  • supervisory experience of global business teams and outsourced services
  • buying experience in Europe and Asia
  • speaks English, Hindi, and Mandarin fluently
  • experienced in contract drafting
  • expertise in import/export requirements of the US, the EU,
    India, and China
  • in-depth knowledge of REACH, WEEE, RoHS, and similar regulations
  • expert in should cost models, TCO models, and global logistics models
  • experienced user of e-Sourcing and e-Procurement applications and expert in e-Negotiations and award optimization
  • expert in spend analysis
  • great project management skills
  • risk management skills
  • working capital management skills
  • financial reporting experience
  • innovative and capable of leading cross-functional innovation teams
  • NPD experience
  • implemented multiple successful SRM initiatives
  • experience with CSR and sustainability initiatives
  • expert at market intelligence
  • high CQ
  • great leadership skills

See the problem?

People are the most important resource in today’s global economy!

Especially since, with the retirement of the baby boomer generation, there will be fewer of them with the necessary skills who will be able and ready to work for your organization in the coming years.

So, don’t just manage your talent, as more and more articles are telling you to do, train your talent, empower your talent, reward your talent, and trust your talent.

With employee morale at an all-time low and the number of employees looking to change jobs at an all time high, you need to be different. How about you stop treating them like expendable resources and liabilities and start treating them like irreplaceable assets who can be trusted to do the job they were hired for? Just a thought.

The Most Important Question a Manager Can Ask

“The most important question a manager can ask, according to the HBR blogs, is also important for CPOs since they are managers too. So, while you’re thinking about savings targets, perfect order percentages, and supplier risk, don’t forget to ask your employees:

What can I do to help you be more effective.

Even though the answers you will get at first may be irrelevant and along the lines of “I’m doing fine” and “Give me a raise”, once your employees understand that your goal is to remove barriers to their success, you will start to get real answers, and once you understand how you can make them more effective by breaking down organizational barriers, getting them the tools and data they need, and increasing their supply management skills, you will start to see more organizational success.

Is It Time To Dust Off the Resume?

The annual salary surveys are reporting that salaries are rising again. In addition to Next Level Purchasing’s survey, which was discussed in yesterday afternoon’s post, we have the Logistics Management 27th Annual Salary Survey, which found that median salaries increased for the third year in a row. And even though the average increase was only 2.2%, that’s still good given the economy, and a 12.5% increase since 2007.

The article notes that a number of search firms are saying, including Kimmel & Associates, are saying that the time is right for seasoned pros looking for a new job, but is it? While I agree that your average manufacturer and retailer is as lean as they can get and that they are not going to be able to build their top lines if they don’t staff up their supply chain departments, I still don’t know if the average company is ready to hire. While it’s true that the impending crunch for seasoned supply chain and logistics talent is going to put any seasoned pro with a good education at a premium, I still don’t see a plentiful job market. But I guess it never hurts to be ready with a polished resume when it does return. Any thoughts?

How Relevant is Africa to the Purchasing Equation?

Quickly reviewing Next Level Purchasing’s “2011 Purchasing & Supply Management Career & Skills Report”, one statistic jumped out at me — 37.5% of the respondents are from Africa. Considering that the GDP of Africa is only 2 Trillion, give or take a few hundred billion depending upon whether you prefer the IMF, World Bank, or CIA Factbook calculations, or about 3% of global GDP, as compared to the roughly 16 Trillion for North America, 18 Trillion for Asia, and 20 Trillion for Europe, the first question that jumped to my mind was relevancy. (And the fact that Europe only accounted for 6.7% of respondents didn’t help.)

It might be the case that Purchasing managers in developing areas are a lot more interested in surveys since they are trying to establish the importance of their profession, and it might be the case that most of Next Level Purchasing’s students and/or association members are from developing areas since they would be the least likely to have access to local training and eduction options (and Next Level Purchasing’s courses and certification is completely web based), which would account for a strong showing from these areas, but it makes one wonder how relevant the results are to Europe and North America, which are still the dominant locales for international purchasing (even though Asia is rising).

While it likely doesn’t affect the responses to skills, education, and certification related questions, as the top answers to the most important skills response are typical, the expected results from certification trend normally, and people who study for certification generally believe in its importance, it does put some suspicion on the applicability of the average annual cost savings & avoidance results. While I do agree that savings will increase by years of experience, annual hours of training, certification, and degree status, I’m not sure that I would trust the unweighted averages, especially since the average cost savings go from about 800K in Africa to 3.7M in Europe. It would be nice to see the savings and avoidance statistics broken down by continent, or at least weighted by continent, to clearly illustrate the impact of education and training.

Relevancy aside, it is nice to see interest in professional purchasing spreading through Africa and Asia.