Are you interested in a career in supply chain?
I have been a Supply Chain Management practitioner for almost 30 years. But to be honest, I sort of fell into it because my first job out of college was customer service and order fulfillment for a plastics company. It was the job offer that paid the most at the time and considering I was a liberal arts major, I was lucky I found a job in business and happily took it! However, taking that job was quite serendipitous, as customer service in plastics turned into operations and materials management, which led to purchasing, which led to a whole new set of experiences in the CPG industry propelling me into planning and strategic sourcing. If I only knew then what I know now I would have jumped at the chance to study Supply Chain Management!
Today so many of my friends ask me to talk to their kids about college majors that would best position them for success and future career growth. Of course, it depends on the aptitude of the student but my advice is always the same if you want to ensure job availability, strong starting salaries, and career growth potential, I say get into Supply Chain Management!
“Every organization has a supply chain, even a corner store.”
One of my favorite professors in business school once told us organizations perform 3 core functions:
- Marketing generates the demand
- Supply Chain creates the goods or services by transforming inputs into outputs
- Finance tracks how well the organization is doing, pays the bills and collects the money
So why Supply Chain and why is it a smart choice?
Consider this… There’s a very important change happening throughout the business world. It’s the Amazon Factor! We are living in a connected world. Organizations are at the start of a race to digitally transform their Supply Chains. Digital Transformation of the Supply Chain is one of the most important business trends of our time.
Many organizations have already started investing in their digital capability. Within 3 to 5 years, organizations expect dramatic improvements in their processes as the return on investment, from automation to better collaboration, all enabled by technologies like Supply Chain visibility/tools, Big Data Analytics, and the Cloud. As companies invest in these and Supply Chain simulation tools, there will be a talent vacuum to fill. Data scientists will develop the Cloud based systems, but Supply Chain end-users will bring it all to life enabling senior leaders to take decisions faster and to mitigate risk in a global network by having access to an integrated set of data flows and information.
All this means jobs! And it means bright career growth opportunities for enterprising men and women entering or seeking advancement in Supply Chain Management, Logistics or related fields, such as Engineering or Management Information Systems. Nowadays there are and have been SCM programs at major universities alongside other business majors. This has been expanding rapidly, with many more universities offering SCM programs. The average graduate from a top-ranked program will have multiple internships at Fortune 500 firms, an above average salary, and a job secured by end of summer to Thanksgiving for May grads. I see this all the time with new grads seeking their first full-time roles. This has been the case as it is a degree needed badly in both up and down turns in the market. Top-ranked universities for SCM include Penn State University, Michigan State University, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, MIT, University of Tennessee, Arizona State University, and Carnegie Mellon just to name a few.
The Amazon Factor and the Connected World
A variety of macroeconomic and social developments are changing the popular perception of the Supply Chain industry—and may even be bringing some sexiness to it.
In a recent article in Logistics Management, Tisha Danehl, vice president of Ajilon Professional Staffing in Chicago, is quoted as saying that demand for Supply Chain professionals in manufacturing and retail has “gone through the roof.” And women are finally breaking into the top echelons of what had been a male-dominated industry.
“Our agency has seen a 45% increase in demand for logistics and Supply Chain jobs and an 80% increase over the past two years,” says Danehl. “It’s by far the fastest growing segment in our portfolio.”
Amazon, along with Apple and Unilever has indeed redefined and put Supply Chain on the map according to the Gartner top 25 Supply Chains survey of the last few years. This public awareness of Supply Chain’s crucial role in world commerce and the circular economy is giving college grads a new career path to consider. Collaboration across the end-to-end value chain has given rise to the need for this Digital Transformation. On social media, young people are showing a strong growing interest in the field. From my personal experience, I see millennials attracted to companies with a purpose. At Unilever, new grads are highly attracted to the USLP – the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. They want to work in a place where they can have a positive social impact and sustainable Supply Chains such as Unilever’s are offering the opportunity to deliver value and values!
Employers are looking for and requiring so-called “soft skills,” such as collaboration, creativity, problem-solving and multitasking for the fast-paced Supply Chain work environment. Typically these are strengths that many strong females happen to possess, thereby opening opportunities for women in a traditionally male-dominated field.
According to a recent article in SCDigest and anecdotal conversations I have had with several Supply Chain professionals in my network, the demand for supply chain talent continues to outpace available supply.
An article in the Wall Street Journal from 2015 highlights that with global operations becoming more complex, companies in manufacturing, retail and technology – and the consulting firms that service them – are scrambling to hire people with Supply Chain expertise. But these experts are hard to come by.
Getting a graduate degree in Supply Chain is a hot commodity these days. Some, in fact, are calling a graduate degree in Supply Chain management “the new MBA,” referencing the hot trend in business education of the 1980s and 1990s.
According to many recruiters, demand for Supply Chain Management graduates at the undergraduate level is high, and job placement is close to 100 percent. Supply Chain majors are prepared for entry-level positions such as logistics planner, buyer, supply management analyst or inventory specialist. Career-track progression leads to the vice president level in Supply Chain related areas with firms from around the world and in all sectors of the economy, public and private.
Within the Supply Chain, your career choices are limitless. There are positions for those who enjoy working with other people to negotiate deals, and positions for those who crave analysis. And there is an even greater need for those who can do both.
Starting salaries generally range from $50,000 to $70,000 for grads from top schools.
A Career in Supply Chain Management
As one advances his or her career in the field SCM professionals hold a range of job titles and engage in a wide variety of activities, including demand and supply planning, tactical and strategic capacity planning, quality management, strategic sourcing and procurement, including vendor selection and price negotiation, forecasting, quality management, strategy development for Supply Chain integrations following mergers, and developing and using information systems to track and improve performance. These are just a few of the job titles in the field:
- Supply Chain manager
- Procurement Manager
- Procurement analyst
- Business analyst
- Commodity manager
- Supply Chain consultant
- Logistics consultant
- Category manager
- Materials project manager
- Import/export agent
I continue to feel energized doing what I do, and I can’t wait to wake up and do it again the next day. The best part of the job is knowing Supply Chain now has a seat at the table versus years ago when I first started out. CFO’s are seeing the major contributions to the bottom line. Hop on that bandwagon!