Over the past few years of economic turmoil worldwide there has been a fair amount of discussion regarding the purchasing industry. When times are tough people need to increase income or reduce spending so a lot of focus and attention has been given to the procurement process and reducing spending. Yet even with the spotlight on the procurement industry, there still seems to be a gap in the talent due in part to the reputation of the industry as unattractive, maybe even dull and boring.
If you talk to various professionals in the industry you will often find one of two situations to be true. One is that they sort of stumbled into the profession and weren’t actually looking for a job in the industry. The other is that their preferred career choice hit a dead end. They may have been laid off or simply were not in a position to advance in their professional goals.
Why is this? With this undesirable stigma that seems to be attached to the industry college graduates don’t look very closely or may not even know about their options in this field. Career services don’t heavily promote the industry and other options such as finance, law, technology or marketing are far more attractive and exciting. They want to have an exciting career to brag about and build a future on.
So how do you change the perception of an entire industry from dull and boring to exciting and lively? It starts with people in the industry being excited about their work. Quit treating it like your backup career and put your all into as your primary career. Communicate better with college career services so they understand the more exciting aspects of a career in purchasing. Creating fast, flexible supply chains can be just as exciting and rewarding as other more well known career objectives. Utilizing innovation to improve revenues and margins can be a fun mix of both finance and technology.
Have you ever heard a training on the power of one person to change the world? Only in this case instead of changing the whole world we want to change the perception of an industry. And instead of one, we have thousands upon thousands of people in the purchasing industry. Imagine the power if just portion of these work together? Will you be one of them?
