How to Hire the Best Procurement Pros - the Job Description
How to Hire the Best Procurement Pros has got to be high on your agenda especially as the recruitment market hots up and, based on what we are seeing currently post-covid, shifts to a candidate market.
So how do you attract the best talent and hire the best procurement professionals?
We’re going to go through this, step-by-step.
Step 1: Show that Salary Information in the Job Description!!!
“I’ve seen roles asking for almost CPO levels of work to be told they’re only looking to pay out £40k in salary. It’s crazy.”
I cannot emphasise this point enough.
I personally will not engage in any potential job if the advert does not give an indication of salary banding for the role.
The amount of money the company is willing to pay a candidate is known.
Yes, they may alter their offer for an exceptional candidate and increase the offer.
However, they’ve got the baseline of what they are willing to pay their new employee and this should be included in any job description.
This will cut out time wasters either way.
Some will see the pay as too little.
Some will see it as too much based on their current role (I’d say go for it though!).
Additionally, if you are going through a recruitment agency, they need to be able to, at the minimum, have the knowledge of the salary.
This means you can have a conversation with them to find out the salary and the company do not have to publicly display the salary.
I’m always cautious of a company that doesn’t want the salary expectations public.
It could mean there is a massive chasm of salaries in the existing team for the same or similar role.
This could be a warning of the culture that you may join if you landed the role.
Applying for a Procurement role takes a huge amount of time.
The candidate needs to research the company, tailor its CV to the role and even more so if it's going through a CV checker that algorithmically checks for keywords before deciding whether a human gets to see the CV.
Then you've got the interview process which can go on for multiple rounds.
To get through all of this to be met with a salary below your expectations is not a pleasant experience.
It's often not possible to deduce from the role description what the potential salary will be.
I've seen roles asking for almost CPO levels of work to be told they're only looking to pay out £40k in salary. It's crazy.
If you are a hiring manager in procurement, ensure that you give visibility to the salary on the job description. Step 1 complete.
Step 2: Give the Procurement Pro a vision to work to
If like me, you may have become cynical about a “Procurement vision”.
This is usually part of a procurement transformation and is in place as a guiding force throughout the transformation.
However, despite my cynicism, I do believe you need to know what the Procurement team you're applying to join is trying to achieve.
You need to understand how you will fit within the team and what you will be jointly working to.
Without this, every Procurement job advert/description looks the same and if you want to get the very best Procurement Pros in your company then you need to make your role stand out.
Procurement hiring managers can have a massive amount of influence here.
Ensure that the description sets out some sort of vision as to:
What the company is looking to achieve
What the team is doing to support this vision
how the Procurement role you are offering supports the team/company vision
It’s rare to see anything like this in job adverts but it’s going to significantly increase the number of exceptional procurement pros who are wanting that role.
They like to know what the challenge is before they start the application process. If you want the best, start putting out the best job descriptions and market accordingly.
Step 3: Describe your current challenges
For me, this is a must moving forwards.
Whilst I want to see what the vision is of the team, I need to know what challenges the team face currently.
Why?
This is where most of my time is going to be taken up if I get in the role.
I don't want to join another generic procurement team that isn't aware of the challenges it faces.
I want to join a self-aware team, that gets the situation they're in and knows what they want to do to solve it.
Why, this role I’m applying for is likely to be a key part of that.
As a procurement hiring manager, set out the challenges the team faces at a top level. This gives a point of conversation at the interview stage.
We need to think differently about how we advertise procurement roles.
Let us know in the comments what you’d like to see done differently.
Check back soon for more information of the interview and job offer process.