Ghosts, Burning Bridges & Fake Green Pastures – Oh my!

A fascinating Bloomberg report came out this week stating that approximately “65% to 70% supply chain professionals are open to learning about new job opportunities within six months of getting their current position”.
Sure, this is a very alarming trend, but it’s not a huge surprise given the demand for supply chain talent is off the charts and “The Great Resignation” continues to wreak havoc in the business world. While we’re currently experiencing one of the strongest candidate-driven job markets in decades, especially for supply chain practitioners, it’s very important to understand that this trend will pass in the future, shifting the tides back to the employer, especially if, I mean when, we fall into a recession.
Here are a few of the hot trends we’ve spotted in the overall supply chain job market along with our recommendations for how you can best position yourself for success, while avoiding the common pitfalls that exist within a high-demand, low unemployment job market.

Ghosts

As you may have guessed, I’m referring to the practice of “ghosting” which means exploring a career opportunity as a candidate, or exploring a candidate as an employer, and somewhere along the process, one of the parties goes dark aka “ghosts” the other party. While ghosting has existed for as long as I’ve been in recruiting, especially on the employer and recruiter side of the house (sadly!), candidates seem to be hell-bent on getting revenge in the ghosting department.
Bottom line, It’s never cool for a candidate or employer to ghost another party. With this in mind, we strongly recommend that if you’re going to pursue a different opportunity, at a BARE MINIMUM, shoot a short but sweet email to the point of contact to let them know you’re pulling out of the hiring process. Thank them for the consideration and wish them the best of luck. Anything less can lead to the next trend below, which you absolutely want to avoid at all costs.

Burning Bridges

Just when you think you’ve seen everything in the world of hiring and recruitment, a candidate comes along and does something incredibly stupid that leads to pissing off an employer, or vice versa, as employers make stupid mistakes too! All I can tell you is that it truly is an incredibly SMALL WORLD, and I would argue most of us that work in supply chain are only separated by one or two degrees. When you do something such as bad mouthing a past employer, resigning without putting in a notice, or something along those lines, you will likely “burn a bridge.” Obviously there’s a tremendous amount of job movement going on, and that former boss that you ticked off could land at the company you just went to, or one of your customers, and that may not bode well for you. Always assume that you will run into the people you work with at another time and place in the future, and avoid any action that could create an adversarial situation further down the road.

Fake Green Pastures

As the old saying goes, “the grass is NOT always greener on the other side.” And to prove this point, there are plenty of recent studies that show “The Great Regret” is indeed a real thing, meaning many workers who participated in “The Great Resignation” ended up regretting their decision shortly after moving to a new employer. With the red hot job market in supply chain, along with more people quitting for new jobs than ever before, it’s natural for one to contemplate “Is there a better job out there for me, right now?” or “Should I respond to these pesky supply chain recruiters that keep shoving jobs in my face every day?” Of course the only person that can answer this question is YOU.
Before you take any action, it’s super important to pause and reflect on your current status, meaning your overall job satisfaction, career growth, how you’re tracking towards your life and work goals, etc. Is it really that bad? Are you developing your skills and qualifications? Do you like the people you work with and for? Are you compensated fairly? Is your work/life balance optimal and will it really improve if you leave? Of course if you make the decision to start exploring other opportunities, you still need to pause and put pen to paper as it relates to charting out your next career move. The last thing you want to do is take the next recruiter call, get excited about a big pay raise, and hastily take a job that leads to higher pay but with a boat load of job misery. Invest ample time into research and discovery, to identify the right companies and opportunities to pursue, then develop a job search action plan that helps with increasing the odds landing with one of your dream companies.
To your success!
Rodney