6 Strategies To Make a Career Change To Supply Chain

A career in Supply Chain can be fun, creative, rewarding, and smart for the long term, so if you want to learn more about “How to Career Change To Supply Chain”, you are on right track! Businesses will always need supply chain professionals to manage the information flow & product flow of their products, no matter what else changes in consumer behavior or industry trends.

As the world quickly transforms and career paths are changing at the speed of light, you may find yourself interested in a supply chain career even without much formal training in it — and that’s normal. These days, not everyone ends up making a career in their college or university major. Personally, I was started my career as Textile Engineer before I decided to do MSc in Management of Production from the Chalmers University of Technology.

You may be working in a competency such as finance, manufacturing or warehousing yet want to switch to Supply Change Management. It may seem daunting and even inconceivable to take such a leap of faith without feeling as though there must be some sort of qualification to be done in order to start a Career Change To the Supply Chain.

Not necessarily, as proven when I hired someone called Scott Williamson as a distribution manager during my time as a Supply Chain Manager at one of my previous jobs in the UK.

I had contacted Giuseppe Borsellino from Michael Page, someone I have made vlog regarding Top Tips on How to Prepare Better for Supply Chain Interviews to help me, source candidates, explaining that I needed someone who had group/team leader’s qualities to be a manager for the distribution and warehousing. The CV sent had no experience listed for warehousing or distribution, but I was assured to meet with Scott before making a final decision.

At the point of the interview, Scott was team leader technician, the natural first question I put to him was with no experience of supply chain why should I hire you.

To answer this question, Scott started illustrating his answer with 5 key skills he knew he had that would match the requirements needed to complete the role advertise despite not having specific supply chain experience.

The 5 skills Scott demonstrated were:

1. Continuous Improvement Mindset – this entails applying neat techniques to improve his current role and reduce waste as was prevalent
2. Have a Highly Proficient Understanding of Data Management – to be able to understand, analyze and utilize numbers in the context of your role, regardless of what it is. Data is factual and to able to use it for improvements is a valuable skill that is transferable to any role involving number crunching.
3. High Learning Curve Aptitude – to learn new concepts (whether they are new to the company/role to new to you as someone implementing a career change) and not only apply them but use your initiative to improve the process
4. Ability to Learn on the Job – This is a natural follow-on from having the above mindset when coming into a new role. Even if you are being promoted within your company, being willing and able to learn on the job is essential. It is not just a job title that has changed, roles and responsibilities change. You must be open to learning on the job in order to adjust as quickly and easily as possible.
5. Be a Team Player – to enjoy being part of and help improve a team let alone it is an important trait and discipline that must be a prerequisite for anyone wanting to be a team leader/manager.

So, bottom line was, although his experience and CV showed no experience in any Supply Chain competency, the fact he demonstrated transferable skills and knowledge as well as a hunger to learn something new, bought a refreshing change to the interview and bagged him the role, something he was very successful at.

Now let’s look at my 6 Strategies To Make a Career Change To Supply Chain.

Tip 1: Learn

Learn and demonstrate the Supply Chain Competencies, skills, and behaviors you need for the Supply Chain role you choose to enter.

This can be divided into 3 demonstrable sections:

1. Supply Chain Technical Skills – there are many areas within Supply Chain Management such as logistics, materials management and procurement. Research to understands what each of the roles is and entails to decide which path you wish to take.
2. Soft Skills i.e. People Skills such as communication, leadership, influence, and presentation skills. This also includes your emotional intelligence and how you deal with people in your business as well as your ability to network.
3. Technological Know-How – Understanding the current and emerging technologies and applications such as cloud computing, internet and RPA Robotic Process Automation – ensure you are up to date with the latest technological applications and trends. This is not limited to the area you are choosing to go into but the whole ‘picture’ of what is happening in SCM.

This tip is broad and one where you can very much not know where to begin or where to end you’re your research. To help you encapsulate and direct you, check out my Supply Chain Competencies blog and Materials Management Competencies Assessment Tool along with a video discussion with Radu on How to Be A Top Talent in Supply Chain – all of which are full of top tips and help streamline the broad spectrum and myriad of information as well as introduce and provide valuable information of the general skill you need.

Tip 2: Show Supply Chain Competencies in Your Current Job

So, you have done your research, read the many blogs and articles out there, viewed some informative videos. That’s great, but it does not make up for the void that is experience. As is standard now – with the exception of graduate positions, without experience, it is very difficult to get that all-important foot in the door.

How do you gain experience when you are in a job that has nothing to do with the supply chain directly?

The key here is understanding what you have and what to do with it. Find or list the skills and competencies in a supply chain that can be molded into your current role.

Try and get involved in supply chain-related projects, improve the material planning processes on the shop floor, for example, do the Kaizen event such as introducing batch order quantity – basically, anything you can do that will open up actual experience in the supply chain.

This will get you noticed by showing you are getting involved in learning new skills and getting involved in projects of different skillset and competencies to what you are currently trained and/or qualified in, showing your desire to learn and adapt and potentially earmarking you for progression within the company in the competency of the supply chain when applying for any position that may come up.

Continue to read the full blog here.