chrisharries

With rising unemployment figures, employers are now in a seemingly powerful position when it comes to recruitment. The perception is that regardless of the role, as an employer you can generally pick and choose the ideal candidate from the ideal background. Specifically in purchasing recruitment, many businesses are now looking for people who have experience of dealing in a particular commodity, or for buying from certain suppliers. But are these employers missing the point? And are they missing out on the most talented people on the market?

On the face of it, there is a lot of sense in recruiting people into your business that have a good knowledge of purchasing specific parts or components, as there will be less development needed, however this does narrow down the search dramatically. With a mixed picture being presented to us through the media many candidates are worried about leaving a seemingly secure job resulting in fewer candidates applying for roles. In fact I recently blogged about this here;

Unemployment rate rises, so why is it difficult to find the right candidate?

Faced with this uncertain picture, it is encouraging that employers are now looking at other options. Recently I have started work on Purchasing assignments where the line manager has briefed me to find someone who has a detailed approach to sourcing and negotiating with suppliers, but it doesn’t matter if they have hands experience of dealing with a particular commodity or type of component. In fact, some companies are actively trying to recruit people from other sectors. For example, I am recruiting for an aerospace client who is actively looking to bring people in from other sectors.

The benefit of this is that you will have someone in your team who will look at a problem in a different way to the established norm. They will ask the ‘silly questions’ that you would normally ignore and this often results in developing further opportunities to make savings.

There are also other sectors such as the Rail industry, which actively looks to recruit people from the automotive sector in particular, as they are perceived as having greater exposure to lean manufacturing and supply chain processes.

So what works for your sector? Is it important for you to recruit someone who has product knowledge, or do you believe the process is more important and that it is easier to learn about a product?

Please let me know your thoughts...