Hire the Best Supply Chain Talents

Jim Collins in “Good to Great” says the most important thing for the development of a company is to get the right people on the bus (level 5 leaders). It sounds as simple as if you have the right people in your team, they will figure out the rest.

This seems to chime along with the philosophy of lots of technology companies. Recently I noticed that Google, Facebook and Amazon are fiercely competing for talents. They tried to entice the best talents with promises of high compensations, stock options and unparallel benefits. It made me think how we can identify and hire the best talents in the field of supply chain.

 

Background and Experiences

For those technology or newly minted social network companies, the background and experiences are sometimes not as important as what the potentials the candidates carry, because they are often tasked to explore the uncharted territory or create things that don’t exist. However, this is different for supply chain.

As technology develops, supply chain has admittedly changed a lot over the years. For instance, the techniques of managing a warehouse are different from before. There are many new software (WMS), robots, forklifts and racking systems have emerged in the past few years, but if you notice, the fundamentals of warehouse management remain unchanged. The new technology helped to improve productivity and efficiency.

So when you look for a warehouse manager, the previous warehouse management experience is definitely a plus, although the candidates might use a different software or technique in their previous job experience.

 

Skills

Abilities to analyze and solve issues, prioritize and handle stress are the skills that I am looking for when I am interviewing supply chain job candidates. However I found how to evaluate those skills is always a challenge.

In order to identify and evaluate the skills and avoid the scripted answers from job candidates, some technology companies developed those quirky brain teasers, such as how long will it take you to climb Mount Fuji.

One thing for sure, do not ask candidates questions like, “do you have the skills of XXX”, because guess what answer you will receive. Instead, you might want to ask the candidates to describe a scenario from their previous experiences and then draw your conclusions and assessments from that.

 

Personal Traits (character and personality)

By the end of the day, you are trying to find a member in your team. If you think about it, from 8 to 5, including possible travel time and team outing, the time you will spend with your team members might be more than the time you spend with your family, or some of your relatives.

Therefore before you make your final hiring decision, ask yourself, “will I feel comfortable to travel with him (or her) next to each other in a car for 6-8 hours? Or if I will have a family retreat in the summer with my close friends and families, will I invite him (or her)?” I found these are the best guts check when you are not sure about personal traits of a candidate.

 

Values

When Jim Collins elaborated about getting the right person onto the bus, his focus was on the value. Because experience and skills can be developed, or personality can be arguably changed, whereas values are the most difficult to modify or even identify.

Value is what a person believes, such as motivation to achieve excellence or integrity. They are deeply embedded in the persons’ believes.  They can be hidden for years. However, when a person is facing a unprecedented challenge or is required to make a critical decision on his own, values of the person actually matter the most. Therefore last but not least, hiring a person who has values consistent with you and the rest of your team, the rest may take care of itself!