Supply Chain Skill Gap-Who wants?

You see an evident skill gap in Supply Chain professionals in various industries that is translating into:

1. Unemployment - the worst consequence.
2. Creating hindrance for the industries in gaining competitive advantage and in bringing more foreign reserves for the country.
3. Depriving individuals of their growth in profession and lifestyle.
4. Not achieving Value for Money in academics.

The greatest challenge is that when you look at stakeholders, you see an isolated approach and rarely find collaborated efforts to deal with it:

As an Employer: When you need to hire a skilled Supply Chain resource for particular requirements of the role, you observe huge skill gap in what you are looking for and what comes to you from the market. You don't just want to hear the buzz words like strategic sourcing and category management. You actually want someone to be able to add value and make resilient strategies for you and translate those strategies into creating competitive advantage over the market. How successful you remain? I know you are in trouble.

As a Professional: You invested huge amount in graduation; served industry for reasonable time and started considering yourself sufficiently skilled to remain in demand. How successful have you been in making your employer realize your talent and reward likewise? And when you apply for better opportunities, how often are you asked for professional certifications? I know you are in trouble.

As Academia: You designed or adapted good Procurement and Supply Chain curriculum, hired PhDs for teaching, established collaborations for research and gave dreams to the students that they will soon be hired by the companies as they pass out. How satisfied you are by the ratio of your students getting hired and given appropriate role? I know you are in trouble.

Assuming responsibility, all of us need to play our role in identifying gaps leading to this chaos as it hurts everyone's purpose. Let's have a look at the gaps and potential solutions:

As Academia: You invested enough in facilities, curriculum and research but when your product eventually comes to the market, they hear different language than the one you taught. They realize to their shock that what they learned in the institute was more of theory that only provides base for starting up their career. When Senior professionals are approached by students (even PhD) for helping out in their surveys, they hardly find the stuff convincing and questioning what is actually in practice. There are evident gaps and require academia to:

1. Establish constant collaborations with the industry, know the skills they need and align your curriculum accordingly.
2. There are professional Procurement & Supply chain bodies like CIPS, VCare Academy, ISCEA, and APICS that offer collaborations and can render counseling and training to the students at specialization stages.
3. You can formally hire professionals from the industry, who may volunteer, to get teamed up with research students and develop workable supply chain strategies and tools.

As Individual: You pay to the institutes to attain a degree thinking that would be enough for getting a job at the end but that remains your delusion. You must make sure that you get the value for your money and learn the skills that industry is actually looking for. Talking about professionals, they would be more at ease in spending $1000 on mobile phone but would hardly spend on International certifications that enable them to grow and earn more. You must equip yourself with the latest tools and be willing to pay for it. You can only grow if you have what it takes to give growth to the industry.

As Employer: You spend on recruiting supply chain professionals and then expect them to keep your business growing without having You spend on their own development and growth. Then you face retention challenges as well. Industries here are literally seen fighting over professionals through head hunters. Why you don't spend on your resource when you have them in your team? You must adapt the principle that "when you help others grow, you grow yourself more". Have special budgets allocated for the professional training of your procurement and supply chain teams. Send them for International certifications, seminars, conferences and exhibitions. And you would enjoy the value they will get back for you.

Being rich in resources, the industries have got the highest responsibility to develop professionals for adapting sustainable Procurement and Supply chain practices that would not only enhance their profits but would also improve their reputation significantly through serving the Environment and Society at large.

Looking at the growing economy and geographical importance of our region, this is combined responsibility of all stakeholders to invest time and money in developing Supply chain skills that matter and are desired globally, so that industries grow along International pace and professionals get better global opportunities.

Do let others know your opinion in comment section. Let's grow together.

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