Let us help you to INVEST IN YOURSELF – and Certify your SAP Ariba Excellence!

Feb’21; A monthly update by Tyler Watts – SAP Ariba Recruitment Delivery Manager at bluewaveSELECT

We’re in the final week of February already which means the second of my monthly updates for 2021. And this month I want to bring something genuinely useful to the table…

…don’t say I never give you guys anything ??

So previously I looked at the trend for hot SAP Ariba skills in 2021. On the heels of my article I received a lot of questions from many of you asking how to position yourselves to get experience in these areas, and in many instances what courses to focus on to increase your value in a competitive SAP Ariba jobs market.

Despite answering this question many times over the last 4 weeks I’ve realised I hadn’t actually taken the time, up until now, to formulate a clear, concise and in my opinion thorough answer to this question. So this afternoon I’ve set aside some time to put my thoughts into words here.

And herein lies my top 2 best suggestions to help you gain experience in new SAP Ariba areas:

1.     Look for opportunities to upskill wherever possible

2.     Use our massive discount available to access training courses and certifications on the SAP Learning Hub to invest in yourself

UPSKILL WHERE POSSIBLE

A great way to obtain experience in new areas is to trade off your strengths within a company/project against somebody else’s. One company that I recruit for do this extremely well to help create a well versed fully rounded team of SAP Ariba resources. This business are a niche SAP Ariba Consultancy who actively encourage and facilitate upskilling. This is a win-win scenario as they are enabling consultants to grow whilst also ensuring that there are many qualified experts within the SAP Ariba function thus able to handle greater SAP Ariba full stream coverage without the need for hiring in external resources when they win a new project.

In fact, if you are a hiring manager or function lead reading this then ask yourself if you are doing everything you can to fully utilise your existing workforce before considering going out to the open market to hire in additional help. Many times this is absolutely necessary, but often it may be the case that you can upskill highly competent consultants within your current team (who should also be highly motivated to take advantage of this opportunity).

As a consultant within a company, you can try discussing the option to be supported in further training or to work in a support capacity alongside others in new project areas. You should know that any relevant project experience really does go a long way when combined with self-study. I know first-hand that a Consultant with self-study, SAP certification and even minimal (say 6 months) experience on a project will have a significant advantage over a consultant who does not, all other elements being equal.

Consider the two profiles below – put yourself in the shoes of the Hiring Manager… which are you more inclined to veer towards?

Clearly the extra experience and certification will begin to elevate you in the eyes of recruiters (me ??), internal talent acquisition teams, direct hiring managers and function leads.

So try combining points 1 (above) & 2 (below) to start positioning yourself in a more desirable light.

USE OUR MASSIVE DISCOUNT FOR TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION VIA THE SAP LEARNING HUB

It’s great to see so many Consultants posting evidence of newly gained SAP Ariba certifications on LinkedIn and in your CVs, and in my opinion this is a great use of any downtime experienced during the pandemic. I’ve tried to comment and say congratulations on LinkedIn when I’ve seen them but if I’ve missed yours then take this as my congratulations!

To those of you currently thinking about whether to complete further SAP Ariba courses or certifications you may be interested to know that I can offer you 12 months' access to the SAP Learning and Certification Hubs plus UKI SAP User Group membership through bluewaveSELECT at a huge discount to the open market price.

Please follow this link for details 

The Hubs have over 5,000 courses and 6 certifications available to choose from over the next 12 months.

See more information on the Hub: click here

And this offer is valid for the next month, to the 26th March so if interested get moving now!

I think it is possibly the cheapest way to get personal access to the SAP Training and Certification Hubs (open to correction on that though). 

In fact, there are over 50 SAP Ariba related courses/certifications covering all the hot topic areas too such as Sourcing, SLP, CIG, SCC, etc so why not take a look through and see if anything takes your fancy.

Also worth noting; this extends out to the whole SAP landscape so feel free to tell a friend or colleague and get the kudos for saving them some money too (I receive no incentive for providing this, other than the satisfaction of being able to hopefully help).

What courses would I recommend?

Perhaps some of the more pertinent ones to take a look at would be:

• SAP Certified Application Specialist: SAP Ariba SCC (click here)
• SAP Certified Application Specialist: Integration with Cloud Integration Gateway (click here)
• SAP Certified Application Specialist: SAP Ariba Sourcing (click here)

If you have any specific advice to others who may be looking into certifications then please add your thoughts for others to discuss in the comments below.

One great reason for getting a certification is so that you can demonstrate an overall understanding to participate as a member of a project team to a prospective employer without having necessarily possessing (yet) hands on commercial project experience.

I CAN HELP YOU WITH YOUR POSITIONING IF YOU WISH

Utilise your network… just like you are an expert in your domain… I am an expert in mine. If you have any questions or you want to jump on a call/zoom to talk through how you can fully ensure you present the very best version of yourself then I’m absolutely happy to talk about how we can do this to maximise your success.

Nobody wants to blend in within a sea of me-too’s. It’s about standing out!

As many of you will know I run the SAP Ariba Delivery Desk here at bluewaveSELECT and as the year progresses we have placed nearly 3 times as many SAP Ariba consultants vs Jan & Feb 2020 which is awesome news for the market in general! The consensus is that this trend will continue into March and beyond so buckle up for more job alerts from me in the coming weeks.

I’ve also enjoyed getting to know more of you better via video meetings as we fully embrace the new ways of remote working… long may this continue… I’m starting to feel widely accepted into the SAP Ariba community as an honorary member so genuinely thank you to you all – you’ll have me taking the technical courses myself before long!

Call me or drop me a message and let’s say hello +44(0)1423559559, +44(0)7738566539, [email protected] (or add me on LinkedIn). As the SAP Ariba Live conference in Berlin was cancelled last year I unfortunately missed the opportunity to meet a lot of you face to face… that said, we now all know how to use Zoom so virtual coffees are welcome too (you have to supply your own biscuits).