Would you recommend procurement to your kids?
David Rae
in Leadership, Talent Management, careers, marketing, professions, sales, skills, talent, training
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2 Comments
Most procurement professionals I know are, how shall I put this, old enough to have started a family. So it's a common subject of conversation over dinner at roundtables and at events.
Of course it's a good, solid conversation to have. But one thing that strikes me is that I rarely hear people recommending procurement as a profession worth getting into - least of all to their kids. Sure, it can be a hugely varied and fulfilling career. It can involve having relationships with all stakeholders in the business; include foreign travel, good salaries and huge amounts of responsibility...
But would you recommed procurement to your kids?
Most of today's procurement professionals happened upon their roles. I'm not suggesting they don't deserve them, rather that procurement turned out to be the right way to go rather than being a long-term professional objective.
How many of us were told at school that procurement would make a good, solid career? Not many, if any at all. How many of us decided procurement was where they wanted to be before we got there? Again, not many.
Until this changes, until we recommend pursuing a career in procurement to our kids, the profession will always be one, two, maybe three steps behind the likes of law, accountancy and finance. Not to mention marketing and sales.
So, would you recommend a career in procurement to your kids? I suspect probably not.
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Reader Comments (2)
Over the years, then in different organisations I have seen many good graduates come into the profession straight from university but then choose to move into another area of the business after a couple of years.
I will certainly encourage my kids to consider Procurement as a serious career option, indeed my 10 year old is one of the best negotiators that I have ever come across!! This is a skill that I will not be coaching out of her.
In reality, Procurement needs to recruit from a variety of backgrounds (education, skills, experience and age). This is because Procurement requires a multitude of knowledge and abilities from finance to technical, from training & development to relationship skills, from operational procurement to strategic procurement, the list is endless.
So yes, encourage your kids into Procurement but get them to do some grass roots procurement first and equip them with the right questions to ask at the interviews. They want to make sure that they work for Procurement in a progressive organisation rather than a static one.