How to Hire a Great Procurement Professional

When you want to hire a procurement professional who will join your team, you need someone who has a balanced combination of the suitable skills, experience and attitude to complete the rest of the department.

So what skills and attributes exactly do you look for in an employee?

Recently this question has become a topic of much discussion among procurement professionals.I have noticed that the most successful people have many of the same characteristics, combination of analytical skills (strategic thinking, total cost of ownership, and supply market analysis) and soft skills (the ability to work in teams, influencing and persuasion skills, and change management).

Recruiters often complain that they just can’t manage to find talent which matches basic education requirements, skill set requirements, and category experience in the candidates. I think that problem lies in the fact that all of them is in constant search for exact same talent pool for the open positions they have. Even more, they expect their new hires do 100% of the job from day 1.

This expectation is completely unrealistic and usually the reason why so many of positions stay unfilled across North America for months.

So, it’s time to change the way we approach the whole process of screening for talent in procurement business. Don’t be such high demanding employer and you will not have a problem with positions that remain open for so long.

With the shortage of procurement talent, it is imperative that recruiters and hiring managers change their approach towards hiring procurement professionals.

For example, you have a candidate that fits with “only “80% of the skills which are your basic requirements. Have in mind that the rest off that skills can be trained and hire that candidate. This way your company can highly benefit and kill two birds at the same time -open positions will get filled faster and with great candidates who will stay longer because they would have a longer learning process.

The procurement professionals rather work longer for employers who support them to find their talent and appreciate their creativity. The smart ones will listen to our experiences and work with us to get the work done.

It’s not some secret that companies are setting the bar higher to get better employees as they can. In order to get the best people for the job, we need to learn how to understand the psychology of procurement professionals.

The recruiters must stop seeing the procurement professionals as highly analytical and less empathetic persons. They are not interested only in the spend of projects and want to learn more about the job and add their new skills. That way procurement professionals can make good changes in the company they work for. It’s not always about the money.

The procurement professionals have an important role in any company. There are many people in the procurement business, but talented professionals are actually very hard to find. So, dear hiring managers in procurement business, choose wisely between the candidates and pick the best one.