Finding, and hiring, qualified procurement professionals has always been a challenge throughout my career. In the early 2000s, we kept finding “policy police”. However, we were a ‘fee for service’ division in government. No-one wants to “pay” for someone to tell them why they can’t do something. Instead, we needed to be a supporting service that people WANTED to come to, and pay for expertise. Myself and another Senior Procurement Specialist both said we could train for procurement, but we didn’t feel we could train customer service skills. Over the years, we shifted a bit, and found if someone had a ‘great attitude’, we could train them. The only caveat being, how much training time would it take vs time available? and What bad habits would we have to ‘break’ with these new hires?

The Chartered Institute for Procurement and Supply notes top skills in demand globally in their annual Salary Guide, but searching other sites, there are variations. Again, it ‘depends’ upon the industry, knowledge available, time and dollars available for hiring.

When I had a strict budget and not enough time to train staff from scratch; we sought out retirees and/or contractors to provide high-level knowledge on a part-time basis. Then, we sought out eager internal staff who wanted to learn about procurement and contracts. These eager staff from other departments helped us with a succession plan and enabled us to grow a team.

Some of the skills we sought were Customer Service, global understanding of the business operations, connections with other departments, contract law and public policy knowledge.

Some of the skills I’d recommend highlighting on your resume, if you want to enter (or exit) procurement, can be found in this week’s youtube video below….