Attracting the next generation - is procurement doomed to be stuck with mediocre talent?

The following is an extract from the cover story of the May/Jun issue of Procurement Leaders Magazine, titled ’Attracting the next generation’. For the full article, click here.

As more procurement organisations join the fray to fight for a handful of individuals with the capabilities to take their functions forward, the message they’re selling them isn’t always one that can compete with other areas of the business.

Continuing the idea that narrow-thinking functions hire narrow individuals, those who look to augment their team to take the next step are putting themselves in direct competition with other professions. Why would a marketing professional choose to become a marketing category head? Why would a telecoms engineer want to tell a company how to 
buy telecoms?

The more sophisticated procurement organisations are coming up with some clever answers to these questions in order to snare the talent they need.

The head of a function earns their stripes by coming up with a way to make people who hadn’t even looked at procurement understand why it can be the right choice for them.

For Johnson & Johnson Consumer’s VP of global supply chain procurement Ralf Garczorz, success has come by taking a personal approach in order to sell the story of procurement. “I engage with talent on a one-on-one basis, and so educate them on what procurement can be in the future,” he advises. “It’s a place where there’s a lot of opportunity. And people are sometimes surprised by that.”

On a trip to a conference in Switzerland to talk to a class of students about sustainability, rather than procurement, he learned a valuable lesson. “I presented two sustainability case studies and people were extremely surprised that this is what procurement could be. Because of this interaction we hired two people and their reaction was ‘this is so cool’.”

A strong mission statement and a very traceable way of linking the progress of the business and key agendas, such as sustainability, with procurement activities has given life to Mansell’s talent campaign, too. “We have a strong identity and while procurement in pharmaceuticals hasn’t always been seen as leading edge, there’s definite appeal because people can see what we do and they want to make a difference,” she says.

Cynthia Dautrich, CPO of consumer goods group Kimberly-Clark, is equally positive about the opportunities for organisations that can sell a good story to candidates. “We show them a three to five-year plan and we’re very clear about how they fit into 
that plan. The market for talent is quite robust – we can put out a strong message and there are definitely candidates who are eager to get involved,” she says.

A further challenge, however, comes in adapting the approach for different markets, warns Mansell. “We have a core approach to talent, but there needs to be a regional element, because different markets have different drivers and cultures and we need to adapt. In emerging markets, for example, the brand is more important than the role.”

Compensation obviously has a role to play, but procurement isn’t necessarily facing an uphill struggle here; a recent salary survey by the Procurement Intelligence Unit shows that the average wage for the lowest rank in procurement is about €50,000. With the possibility of working up to a CPO’s salary of €200,000, the function pays well compared to many other lines of work.

Yet, as ADR North America president Bill Michels underlines, understanding compensation means developing a path to succession too. “I know a group that developed a group of tactical buyers into strategic procurement individuals – but they didn’t pay them enough so they all left,” he says.