An academic question
Here’s a finding I bet will resonate with buyers: six in 10 employees who graduated from university in the past two years are not working in a profession related to their degree. This is according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, which surveyed more than 700 graduates in employment.
Almost 60 per cent of the people in this category said they were in their current profession because they couldn’t find work in their desired field.
I’m not sure I’ve come across a procurement professional who went to university to do purchasing or supply chain studies. Most seem to have fallen into their current role, having had experience in other areas of business. There’s a lot to be said for taking this route to a purchasing career because it allows you to gain experience of how other departments work. You get a better idea of their procurement needs and making it more likely that you’ll be able to forge good relationships with internal customers.
But undergraduate procurement degrees exist, and people gain them. Are you one of them? Is procurement a subject you can study academically, or is it something that only business experience can teach you to do?
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They are complementary. Advancement in the purchasing and supply profession is limited in the absence of either of them. As far as business is concerned, experience prevails over academic qualifications. This phenomenon is common to most professions.
It’s a continuous upward spiral of learning – academic study, gaining experience by doing the job, additional training on specific topics, gaining more experience….
But you can start at various points on the cycle: most of the people I know who have academic qualifications in Procurement have obtained them mid-career through post-graduate study, after having chosen their specialism. Among this group, qualifications which pre-date the choice of specialism are often in unrelated disciplines.
Acquiring academic qualification is not wrong, but that alone without the professional qualification and experience, one is not well equipped for this profession.
Hardened practitioners will tell you that there is no substitute for experience and that “on the job” learning is all that is required. From my long experience I would have to refute this overly simplistic approach and assert that the acquisition of some level of disciplined learning is essential in providing the modern day procurement professional with a full set of skills. The long and hard process involved in obtaining a formal qualification is also sound preparation for the minefields of planning and negotiation which are inherent in Supply Chain Management. Having said all this I would never recommend that someone embark on a Business Course (HNC or Degree) purely based on Purchasing & Supply Chain Management. Most of the SCM jobs are “Industry Specific” and an individual would need to find an industry that is suitable to his temperament, geographical location and financial demands before committing the efforts (and costs) involved in, say, a CIPS qualification. It worked for me.
A blend of both the academic and professional qualifications in the Purchasing and Supply Chain Profession are pre-requisite prior to the attainment of work experiences. People who acquired their certificates before employment tend to abide by the ethical principles of the famous and growing profession and the vice versa.
I’m a student member of CIPS, you can join also.