by Jennifer Hart Yim | Mar 22, 2017 | Blog, Leadership, Logistics, Supply Chain, Talent
By calling them “soft skills,” are we shortchanging competencies that are critical for supply chain and procurement professionals to succeed?
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
One of the biggest stories in the world of Supply Chain and Procurement talent over the past few years has been the emerging importance of Soft Skills. Time was, the business world saw Supply Chain and Procurement as highly analytical fields, where the ability to organize and interpret data was paramount. Analytical skills are still important, of course. But as the field has become more strategic — with a greater impact on wider areas of business — professionals in the field have had to become stronger at advocating for it. No senior Procurement professional is going to get very far into a Procurement transformation without being able to advocate for their Procurement method and what it can deliver. No one is going to transform their organization’s Supply Chain without being able to explain whatever insights they’ve gleaned from data to senior management.
When we say “Soft Skills,” we generally mean:
- Verbal communications
- Written communications
- Relationship-building skills
- Presentation ability
- The ever-elusive and hard-to-define-but-you-know-it-when-you-see-it “polish”
There’s no doubt they’re important, especially when it comes to moving into the senior ranks of leadership. But by calling them “soft skills,” are we really shortchanging them and treating them as ancillary to the “main,” “vocational” skills we ask for? Maybe it’s time to put them front and center.
They may be skills, but they’re not soft
Marketing guru and entrepreneur Seth Godin had an interesting post about the concept of “Soft Skills” and whether the way we think about them needs a revamp: “Let’s stop calling them ‘soft skills.’ They might be skills, but they’re not soft,” he says.
Godin’s basic point is that soft skills build a great workplace culture. And workplace culture isn’t an ancillary bonus to a business’s core function. It is a business’s core function. Godin doesn’t discount the importance of vocational skills. You can’t make a Supply Chain run without data. But for all the talk about strategy, a truly successful company succeeds not because of its strategy, but its culture — just like a truly successful career in business is often driven by soft skills rather than vocational skills.
His point is also that we don’t put as much effort into training soft skills as we do vocational skills, which might be because vocational skills are easier to measure. For example your typing speed (or for a Supply Chain role, your facility with SAP or JAD software) is much easier to measure than the kind of empathic awareness that makes a team sing. The result?
“Organizations hire and fire based on vocational skill output all the time, but practically need an act of the board to get rid of a negative thinker, a bully or a sloth (if he/she is good at something measurable).”
Rebranding soft skills as real skills
Godin’s suggestion is to rename soft skills “real skills” and break them down into new categories by which we might assess them:
- Self Control
- Productivity
- Wisdom
- Perception
- Influence
He breaks these categories down into an exhaustive list of skills (“diplomacy in difficult situations,” “etiquette”) that’s definitely worth checking out, and worth assessing in new hires. It gets a little abstract, but we couldn’t agree more with Godin’s core point: It’s time to put “soft skills” front and center.
In Supply Chain and Procurement, which are the areas we recruit for, soft skills are taking on more relevance as automation begins to handle the nuts and bolts of how products come to market, and how companies work with suppliers. The function is becoming more nimble and more strategic, and the future belongs to those who are able to be strategic advocates — and the companies that prize this in their hires.
Yet in a field that is, by its very nature, obsessed with efficiency, measurement, and data, soft skills sometimes take a back seat.
We think it’s time to change that.
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by Fronetics | Mar 21, 2017 | Blog, Diversity, Leadership, Supply Chain, Talent, Transportation & Trucking
The founder and president of Women In Trucking discusses bringing gender diversity to transportation.
Ellen Voie is successfully breaking down barriers and changing the perception of the trucking industry. As founder and president of Women In Trucking (WIT), Voie and her team work to promote the organization’s mission “to encourage the employment of women in the trucking industry, promote their accomplishments, and minimize obstacles faced by women working in the industry.”
Voie has been named a Transportation Innovator Champion of Change by the White House, a Fleet Owner Dozen Outstanding Woman in Trucking, and a Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine Pro to Know 2016. Her blog was recently named one of the top three logistics and supply chain blogs in 2017 by Fronetics readers.
I spoke with Voie about her experiences in the transportation industry, as well as her hopes for WIT and the future of women truckers.
Early career
After a semester pursuing broadcast journalism, Voie unexpectedly moved back to her hometown in Wisconsin for family reasons and got a job drafting at a steel fabricating plant. The company soon asked if she had any interest in moving over to their new traffic department. Tempted by the offer that they’d also put her through school for traffic and transportation management, Voie gladly accepted.
Voie was responsible for bringing in all the raw steel and shipping out the finished product for three plants. But, as a young female traffic manager, she noticed that she was a bit of an anomaly. “I remember walking into the traffic fraternity meeting and realizing I was the only woman there,” she says.
While she proved herself extremely competent and capable, Voie still met some resistance. “I was 20 years old, hiring drivers that would tell me, ‘I’ve been working longer than you’ve been alive!’”
But to drivers who struggled with the idea that she would be their boss, Voie simply replied, “If you have a hard time taking instruction from a female, then don’t apply.”
Voie would move on from the plant to work as a freelance transportation consultant, executive director of Trucker Buddy International, and manager of recruiting and retention programs at Schneider National. Her industry knowledge and capability earned her great respect in the industry and beyond.
Women In Trucking is born
Voie’s role at Schneider involved helping the company attract and retain drivers. She was asked to focus on four groups: returning military, Hispanics, seniors, and women. “So I started doing research on what women look for in a carrier,” she recalls. “I began to realize that the trucking industry as a whole did not do a very good job of focusing on bringing more women in.”
At the time she was working on getting her pilot’s license and belonged to a group called Women In Aviation. Voie thought to herself, “Why is there not an organization for women in trucking?”
The idea for WIT was born.
After launching in 2007, Women In Trucking was well received. “Companies thought, ‘Yes we should get more women!’” Voie says. And as the driver shortage became more critical, carriers became even more enthusiastic about hiring women drivers. They began to realize that, generally, women take fewer risks and make really good drivers.
Removing obstacles
One of the pillars of the WIT mission is to minimize the obstacles women face in the industry. When asked about the biggest challenges, Voie is resolute: “The biggest obstacle is image. Women outside the industry just don’t think about driving a truck. We need to show them that it’s not the same old physically demanding job that it used to be.”
One of Voie’s strategies for changing the industry’s image is by educating young girls about trucking. WIT has partnered with Girl Scout groups across the country to develop a transportation patch, for example. And Voie says she’s close to getting a female truck driver doll on toy store shelves.
Equipment is another major obstacle facing women in the industry, so Voie works with truck cab designers on ergonomics and truck cab design. Whether it’s changing the slope of dash and the closeness of the steps or adding more safety equipment and other creature comforts, “they are very interested in learning what it is that women want in a truck,” explains Voie.
Truck stops are similarly invested in making their facilities more amenable to female drivers. “They are always asking: How are the showers? How is safety and security? How are you treated when you go in?” Voie notes.
Voie says that though the percentage of female drivers has held pretty steady (around 7%), increased awareness has helped the industry become more accepting of and accommodating to them through the years. That’s in large part thanks to Women In Trucking providing a voice and advocating for women in the industry.
Leaning in
Another shift Voie has noticed in recent years is that carriers have begun actively recruiting women employees. They’re also celebrating female drivers and executives through events and functions, and building retention programs specifically targeting their female employees. Voie points to one company that created a female driver liaison to handle all calls and concerns from women drivers. Steps like these are helping carriers to attract female talent and support existing employees in a very positive way.
Women within the industry, too, increasingly are supporting each other in their careers through networking events and mentoring relationships. Women In Trucking is helping to build these networks and provide mentoring opportunities. As a result, Voie has witnessed a growing number of women taking on leadership roles in the industry.
Voie also stresses the importance of relying on tools like social media to connect with each other. “The trucking community is very close, and social networking brings them even closer,” she says. “Physically they are away from home and their companies and are alone in a cab, and they really depend on social media to stay connected.”
Through mutual support and active engagement, women and WIT have changed the conversation about females in the trucking industry.
The future of Women In Trucking (and women in trucking)
Looking ahead, Voie is focused on growing WIT’s membership and attracting other verticals, like towing, warehousing, and manufacturing. “There are a lot of people in the industry who aren’t necessarily involved exclusively in trucking, and I’d like to be a resource for them as well,” she says.
She’s also working on developing a best-practices guide based on the successes of companies that have a high percentage of women at both the management and driver level. And she’s very excited about an upcoming partnership with Feeding America, in which carriers will donate delivery of a load to help relieve hunger.
As far as the future of women in trucking, Voie sees only more good things to come. And she offers this advice for women facing naysayers who doubt their abilities or experience: “You have to prove yourself. Don’t be a victim. Don’t denigrate yourself or feel that you can’t do it — because you can. When you prove yourself, you’ll love it.”
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by Fronetics | Mar 9, 2017 | Blog, Strategy, Supply Chain, Talent
When it comes to hiring and managing during turbulent times, one thing separates the wheat from the chaff: a progressive focus.
Despite an 8-year bull market, many businesses are still licking the wounds caused by the 2007 financial crisis. Add a volatile political climate and predictions of impending economic turbulence, and you can’t blame those growing wary of rapid growth or expansion opportunities.
But, as the supply chain is already suffering from a talent gap, can companies afford to slow or freeze hiring — or, even, to downsize? Research suggests that organizations that balance caution with a forward-looking talent-acquisition strategy may fair best through difficult economic times.
When risk pays off
Research by Harvard Business School faculty assessed the performance of 4,700 companies across three recessions, and found that only 9% came out in better positions. The success stories had in common a progressive focus, meaning that they were extremely selective about pruning investments and stayed on the watch for growth opportunities.
We’ve all heard anecdotes that support this research.
In the 1940s, when Hewlett-Packard was starting out, times were challenging for the nascent electronics company. But the founders took the tremendous risk of hiring legions of engineers, despite the economic downturn. Many, including the founders, credit the company’s success to this risky decision.
See the way forward by looking back
What does this mean for your business?
Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, senior advisor at the global executive search firm Egon Zehnder and executive fellow at Harvard Business School, offers a comparison to the Roman god Janos, the god of beginnings and endings. Janos is often represented with two heads, facing opposite directions. “His ability to look back is what enabled him to see way forward so clearly,” says Fernández-Aráoz. “His horizon was exceedingly long-term.”
Is your business accurately assessing risk and balancing caution with bold decision-making? Fernández-Aráoz describes how Egon Zehnder weathered the economic crisis following the dot-com bubble burst and 9/11: “A natural reaction would have been to obey the short-term signals and retrench and, indeed, that’s what most of our competitors did, dismissing up to 50% of their staffs. But we barely downsized. We continued to hire outstanding consultants and elected every single candidate who came up for partner during that period,” he writes.
Fernández-Aráoz credits these practices with his firm’s readiness to seize opportunity the moment the market began to recover. The take-away here is that while it’s crucial to mitigate risk during turbulent economic times, “it is those who stay calm, remember the past, and plan for the future who will triumph.”
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by Fronetics | Mar 8, 2017 | Blog, Diversity, Leadership, Strategy, Talent
Gender diversity is generally viewed as a women’s issue. It is not.
Research conducted by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org finds that despite corporate America’s stated commitment to gender diversity, outcomes are not changing. Moreover, the research finds that employees do not believe companies are taking the necessary steps to enact change. The study’s authors contend: “It is time for a new gender-equality playbook. The old one isn’t working. We need bolder leadership and more exacting execution.” While I agree that these are necessary for change, I don’t believe change will occur unless we reframe the issue.
Gender diversity is an economic issue. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that as much as 26%, or $28 trillion, could be added to annual global GDP in 2025 if women were to participate in the economy identically to men. This is unsurprising given current data.
Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. And a review of global stocks finds that companies with higher levels of gender diversity deliver higher returns with less volatility.
Gender-diverse leadership improves performance
Looking specifically at the impact of increased gender diversity in leadership positions, the results are even more pronounced.
Female CEOs in the Fortune 1000 drive three times the returns as S&P 500 enterprises run predominantly by male CEOs. Large companies with a higher proportion of women on executive committees realized a 41% higher return on equity and 56% better operating results than companies with zero women on executive committees. And companies with three or more women board directors significantly outperformed those with sustained low representation by 84% on return on sales, 60% on return on invested capital, and 46% on return on equity — after just five years.
For change to occur we need to reframe gender diversity not as a women’s issue, but as an economic issue. From the top down, companies need to move from commitment to action not to meet quotas, but because a gender-diverse workforce performs better than one that is not diverse.
In an interview I conducted with Cathy Morris, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Arrow Electronics, Morris drew a similar conclusion: “A better organization is not about the numerical statistics related to diversity. A better organization is about better decision-making. Diversity is essential for companies; diversity enables better decision-making and diminishes group think.”
Until it is recognized that gender diversity is an economic issue, it will be difficult to achieve bolder leadership and to realize more exacting execution, and, thereby, improve gender outcomes.
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by Fronetics | Mar 6, 2017 | Blog, Leadership, Supply Chain, Talent
Mark Cuban thinks liberal arts grads will be the next in-demand employees. Could they be the answer to the supply chain talent gap?
The supply chain talent gap has been called a “perfect storm.” Every report cites doomsday statistics of the impending crisis when, by 2025, 60 million baby boomers will exit the workforce, leaving only 40 million millennials take their place.
To make matters worse, future supply chain professionals need to master not only the hard analytical skills but also the soft leadership skills fueled by the transition from an industrial economy to an economy grounded in service and information. In numbers, it means only 20% of the workforce will possess the skills required of 60% of all new supply chain jobs.
Today’s supply chain companies face a more immediate challenge, however: filling junior-level positions (1-4 years of experience). According to Rodney Apple, founder and president of SCM Talent Group: “When you land your first job out of college… you’re not actively looking for a new job. So [companies] really have to do a lot of direct sourcing to find the analysts, engineers, inventory managers, and planners and sell them on why they should make a career move at this stage of their career.”
Where can employers find young talent that possesses both critical-thinking skills and future leadership potential?
Liberal arts majors struggle with employment opportunities in today’s economy
Students graduating in the past decade have been hit hard by a challenging economy. Almost ten years out from the Great Recession, 44.5% of recent college graduates still are underemployed, many settling for jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree.
This is especially true for liberal arts majors. Research shows that their peers in technical fields like nursing and with qualitative skills like engineering have fared better.
But this may soon change. Billionaire investor and Shark Tank personality Mark Cuban, among others, has recently stated that liberal arts majors will be the next in-demand employees. As more technical jobs like coding become automated, companies will need people with creative and critical-thinking skills to offer a human perspective to the automated output. These skills, of course, are the foundation of a liberal arts education.
Bridging the gap between underemployed liberal arts graduates and supply chain companies
Supply chain companies want to find talented employees that can succeed in junior-level positions now but that also could move into management down the road. “Soft skills” like creativity and problem-solving are crucial to both roles — not to mention, every role in between. “That means sometimes being a leader, sometimes being a good follower, monitoring the progress, meeting deadlines, and working with others across the organization to achieve a common goal,” says Lynne Sarikas, MBA Career Center Director at Northeastern University.
Liberal arts graduates bring these abilities to the workplace. Supply chain companies could be actively recruiting these qualified and eager graduates to fill open junior-level positions now, and then groom them to become future leadership. As more jobs become automated, companies will have additional resources to invest in on-the-job training and professional education for their rising stars.
Educated, qualified employees and the shortage of supply chain talent could be an obvious fit — more obvious than liberal arts and supply chain initially sound together. This untapped market of graduates could be the answer to the supply chain talent gap.
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by Jennifer Hart Yim | Feb 27, 2017 | Blog, Supply Chain, Talent
Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting answers the question about what supply chain companies are looking for in new hires in terms of education.
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
This is the first installment of a new Argentus feature where we answer career questions. We’re starting this feature to help put our years of recruitment experience to good use, whether your questions are specific to our recruiting specialty of Procurement and Supply Chain or more general. You can find more questions and answers on our blog.
Drum-roll please for our first question:
Hello,
What value do you see in getting a Master’s Degree in Business/Supply Chain vs. some of the designations out there? (APICS, SCMA, etc.)?
Thanks, Vince C.
Thanks for the question, Vince. First of all, we aren’t experts in the curricula of both of these types of programs. Every university program is different, just as every professional designation is different. So we can’t speak to the specifics of various programs. However, we can speak to what companies are looking for in hiring, and how graduating from these programs builds your personal brand. We talk to lots of people in the field.
The short of it is that both an MBA and a Supply Chain designation such as APICS or SCMA can be a boon to your career, but your mileage may vary. It’s fairly common that a client looking to hire has designations as a requirement. It’s less common that they’ll ask for a particular designation (i.e. SCMA), although it’s certainly happened before. Companies are often looking to see that candidates are invested in their continued career development and education. A designation is a good way to establish that, and to pick up some valuable skills in the process.
It’s worth mentioning at this point that a designation is also often valuable for newcomers to North America who might have overseas Supply Chain Management experience, but haven’t yet secured that all-important first U.S./Canadian role in the field. A designation can be a great way to learn about local Supply Chain practices and increase your initial marketability while searching for that first role. While this option isn’t financially feasible for all newcomers, we’ve heard of candidates using it successfully in the past. A designation can provide networking opportunities, make you more marketable, and boost your income.
So is a designation the right move for your career?
One thing to keep in mind is that roles we get that “require” designations are typically at the sole contributor level — meaning below the “manager” level. Sole contributor roles can pay anywhere from 50k to 130k, so it’s not necessarily a roadblock, but it’s less common that leadership roles require designations. And while many designations offer strategic components to their curricula, we’ve had feedback from certain executives that a lot of the education offered is more transactional in nature — and that can be a limitation. For example, learning how to fill out a purchase order might make you a more immediately employable Procurement clerk at the junior end, but when looking for future leaders, executives want to hire people who have a holistic understanding of business strategy. Why are you filling out that purchase order? What’s the impact on the business? Should we be purchasing from someone else? Can we streamline our purchasing process? Should we be purchasing this at all?
The key to progressing into leadership is an understanding of strategy — so if that’s your goal, assess designations based on their strategic content.
Which brings us to MBAs — the coveted Master’s of Business Administration. It’s becoming more common for hiring managers to require Bachelor’s degrees, but it’s rare that they require an MBA. It’s also pretty new to have Supply Chain as an MBA specialization in the first place, and some people have used them to good effect to boost their careers.
The perception is that an MBA is going to be strategic. That they’re polished. That they have enhanced presentation ability. All of these are leadership qualities, and that’s why MBAs are seen as future leaders, even if the degree isn’t an absolute requirement to advance into business leadership — especially within Supply Chain.
However, there’s also the perception that an MBA isn’t going to be hands-on. From our perspective, an MBA isn’t going to work as a replacement for solid work experience. There’s a reason why people often work for 5-10 years in the field before pursuing an MBA: it’s going to augment your leadership potential, but it’s not going to give you leadership potential if you don’t have a variety of experience beforehand.
MBA programs encourage their students to think ambitiously, but it’s important not to let an MBA “go to your head.” We sometimes hear from recent MBA grads who expect to earn 150k+ on the merits of their degree rather than their experience, and they often find themselves in a 70k job a few years after graduating. If you’re prepared for this possibility, an MBA can be valuable, and it can help make you more marketable as a business leader.
So if you’re looking to slot into a Sole Contributor role, a designation might get you there faster. But if you’re looking to eventually climb into a Director, VP or CPO or CSCO role, an MBA might help you more. But don’t expect immediate dividends.
Again, we hope our advice is helpful! And every case is different, so take it with a grain of salt.
Oh, and send us more questions by visiting our blog and filling out a brief form. It can be Procurement and Supply Chain-specific, or it can be about any career topic.
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