Map Your Supply Chain Career: Functions, Industries, Company Types, and Trends

Supply Chain Catalyst: Ep 2

[00:00:00] Rodney Apple: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Supply Chain Careers podcast. This is episode two of our brand new. Series titled Supply Chain Career Catalyst, where we focus on equipping supply chain professionals with the tools, strategies, and insights needed to grow and thrive in their careers. In episode one, we kick things off by focusing on the importance of self-reflection and career planning.

Before you jump into a job search, we talk through the value of carving out time and space to reflect on your past roles, accomplishments, and lessons learned. We also introduced some of the most impactful tools and self-assessments to help clarify your strengths, interest, and values. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, we highly recommend that you start there before jumping into this next episode where we’re gonna build on that foundation and shift into what all is possible when you think about your career journey and exploring the myriad of career [00:01:00] paths that exist within the field of supply chain management.

Once you’ve had clarity on your interest and strengths, this episode will help map those insights into roles, industries, types of companies you want to target, the workplace environments, et cetera, that align best with your career vision. So we’ll dive right in today and we’ll get started with taking a look at the functional areas that exist within the end-to-end supply chain discipline.

Michael, I’ll turn it over to you.

[00:01:33] Mike Ogle: All right, thanks Rodney. When students ask me what kind of jobs you can do in supply chain, I almost wanna reply with what, what kind of jobs can’t you do in supply chain? It’s, there’s so much breadth that’s there, but let’s start the episode with those core functional disciplines that are shared across so many different supply chains and some of these ways that we classify them that are.[00:02:00]

Really widely recognized by a lot of supply chain professionals. But I’m gonna start with something that might sound like an odd phrase, but to borrow from a quote about history. When you look across companies, supply chains rhyme, but they don’t repeat. And what I really mean by that, it’s the uniqueness that you might find within a specific company’s supply chains, because they have a bunch of them, not just a single supply chain, but you end up finding that uniqueness across supply chains.

’cause it depends on. What kinds of customers you’re serving, what the kinds of materials that are flowing, your competitive strategies, your global reach of customers and suppliers, your pricing and margins, the speed of material flow that’s required. There’s just so many different factors that you have to think about and almost follow up questions when you’re trying to look at jobs in different parts of the supply chain across many supply chains.

And really all that means is that you have a tremendous breadth [00:03:00] of jobs across supply chains and really tremendous flexibility to move around in the industry. So regardless of the title that you hold or are pursuing, because the same title doesn’t mean you’ll be doing the same thing at different companies.

A second baseman on a baseball team has a pretty well-defined job. But a purchasing manager or a transportation director may have a very different day-to-day aspect of their job, depending upon the supply chain that they find themselves within, and we’re gonna cover pieces of that as we go through this as well.

To help you understand what those other pieces of the supply chain are. So before we start getting deep into the various career paths, my first recommendation is that you get in the practice of going to LinkedIn, indeed, maybe ZipRecruiter, and put in the phrase supply chain and see what you get. I. Then take a look at some of the specific job titles that interest you or areas of interest within what’s known as the supply chain operations reference [00:04:00] model or score, SCOR model.

It’s a really good one to be able to understand what are the different areas of supply chain at a high level. Okay, what is score? So one aspect of score is that it simply breaks down supply chains into some basic high level buckets that require different responsibilities and skills to pull ’em off.

So we’ll put a link in the show notes so you can look at the basics of score classifications, but at the highest level, I’ll give you five of these. One is plan, then source, then make, then deliver, and then enable. That kind of covers the other four in a way and overlaps those four. So another way to think about it is you first have to plan out your supply chain, then determine how to source your materials.

Then if you’re making a product, how do you make it? Then deliver to your customer. Plan, source, make deliver. Those are the big four that we tend to talk about. Then that enable [00:05:00] classification means all the stuff that you do or need to have to. To make the plan, source, make deliver really work like software tools that help you plan, source, make, and deliver, plus servers, supply chain, hardware, infrastructure, et cetera.

So most of the vendors that serve the industry are within the enabled classification. But a lot of the jobs that are at different, within different supply chains that are supporting it, but not necessarily doing any of the planning side. The source, make, or deliver functions. So first within score plan does have us figure out how much stuff are we gonna need, where and when.

Plus, figure out what capacity and capabilities we need to support that level of material flow. So some sample job titles that you can think about and plan naturally have the word plan within them, such as demand planner, supply planner, production planner, capacity planner, [00:06:00] and at a higher level integrated business planning manager or director.

And you’ll also hear things like SNOP that will also be parts of what happened in planning. Next we have sourcing. So sourcing is all about how we get the stuff we need within our supply chains. Basically our company, as someone else’s customer, we are trying to get things, some sample job titles within source.

Our strategic sourcing manager, procurement specialist, supplier development purchasing director. So what I want you to note is that there’s a lot of different words that tend to have overlaps like source procure. Purchase supply, use those kinds of keywords. If you’re thinking you might want to pursue a career in those areas.

Next make that word make is all about taking the materials we’ve sourced and transforming them into something our customers want to purchase. And some sample job titles within Make are things like [00:07:00] a plant manager looking at an entire facility, production supervisor, manufacturing engineer, quality assurance manager, materials manager, and again, like with source.

Note all the different words that tend to be part of make like manufacturing, operations, production. All of these can be used somewhat interchangeably. The next one that I want you to think about is deliver. So deliver is all about how to get stuff from point A to point B in the best way for timely and accurate delivery to customers, whether it’s business to consumer or business to business kinds of customers.

So some sample job titles within Deliver are logistics coordinator, transportation manager, warehouse, and distribution center manager, import Export compliance specialist, or a fulfillment analyst. So one more time. Think about all those different words that tend to be part of deliver, such as logistics, transportation, distribution, [00:08:00] warehousing, and fulfillment.

If you search for those kinds of words within that area, you’re going to be looking at things that are in the deliver function and then finally trying to cover those four enable. Once again, all about producing all the products and services that help us do the plan, source, make, deliver, make sure that they happen, that you can track things well and get better.

So things like systems, data, people, and process improvement. Some sample job titles within Enable are supply chain analyst, continuous improvement manager business, or IT systems analyst, automation, project manager or specialist, and even systems maintenance manager. So finishing out this first part of this episode, understanding the high level general functions will begin to help you assess what parts of supply chains might be of interest to you and the kinds of strengths [00:09:00] that you have.

And hopefully you’ve gone through the process of the assessments that we talked about in the first episode to be able to determine your strengths and interests. So you can even see in the titles that there are many process driven titles, people focused titles, and even tech savvy kinds of titles. There are paths for just about everyone, and the great news is that it’s possible to move around, which is particularly valuable if you wanna be able to rise up in supply chain responsibilities.

So moving on beyond these general classifications, Rodney, how about the industry segments that help us better understand the many different kinds of supply chains?

[00:09:41] Rodney Apple: Thanks, Mike. That’s a very solid overview and I hope, hopefully it conveys to the audience that there’s just a plethora of jobs and titles and they’re evolving too over the years.

I know Chris is gonna get in that in just a bit. But you have to think about. So you got the functional side of supply chain. And now taking a look at the industry [00:10:00] side where you’ll find some differences, but you’ll also find a lot of commonalities. I like to group things into four buckets like you just did with the functions.

You, you think about manufacturing companies these are the folks that make a product. They don’t always. Have factories or plants, they may own the design or the ip, and then they outsource the production to another company typically known as a contract manufacturer. So manufacturing is probably where you’re gonna find the most diverse types of roles within supply chain, and they’ll encompas.

Pretty much all of what Mike just covered from a functionality perspective. And just some examples that will easily come to mind if you’re, wherever you’re sitting, look around. Anything in front of you is gonna be manufactured somewhere. You got automotive. If you’re inside of your vehicle listening to this all of these parts were manufactured, all of the components.

And then the OEM, if it’s a Toyota like I drive would’ve been manufactured by Toyota, happen to be drinking a beverage. You’ve [00:11:00] got consumer packaged goods food and beverage, and then there’s plenty of things. Typically anything inside of a grocery store will fall into that category for the most part.

You’ve got med medical devices you’ve got electronics. Your iPhone or your Android is manufactured. Lots of components, lots of parts. Final assembly is likely done by one of Apple’s primary contract manufacturers. Although they are investing into manufacturing here in the USA with a pretty significant investment that they’re putting forth.

Aerospace and defense. You’ve got both the commercial side your deltas, those Boeings of the worlds, et cetera. And then you’ve got your defense contractors. Lots of chemicals, of course pharmaceuticals. You’ve got energy, utilities tons of industrial equipment. Furniture, it, the list goes on and on.

And you’ll again, you’ll find the broader supply chain functions that might cover in pretty much [00:12:00] all of these industries. So the important note here is as you’re embarking on a career it’s important if you want it to get into a manufacturing company that you. Research these companies, as we talked about in episode one.

Conducting in informational interviews is important. The next one is retail. And I’ll bring up wholesale distribution as well they’re very common. The lots of consistencies when you think about the functions typically don’t have manufacturing within retail or wholesale distribution.

But that’s not always the case. For example, Kroger, big grocery retailer, actually the biggest they have, they’re some of their own manufacturing plants. We’ve worked with trader Joe’s. They, they don’t call it manufacturing. They’re typically processing produce maybe some cheeses and other types of foods that they, that may have a short.

Short shelf life. So don’t, just because they are retail or wholesale doesn’t mean they don’t make their own goods, but that’s not very common. In this case, with [00:13:00] retail you’ll typically find that they are all about supporting their stores. So you’re brick and mortar stores, and then you’re gonna find plenty of e-commerce capabilities.

As well. We call that omnichannel if you’re distributing product to brick and mortar stores as well as to your online customers you break that down. If you wanna break it down further, you’ve got hard goods things that are durable, and then you’ve got soft goods. Just like it sounds like apparel.

If I want to go out and buy a t-shirt or a suit and there’s, and it gets a lot deeper than that, but for the sake of time, we’re not gonna go into the weeds. Wholesale distribution is typically more about distributing product to a business. Some good examples could be, Granger. We work with Johnstone Supplies.

It’s a big HVAC distributor, but they’re essentially. Bringing in product typically at a discount price, and they’re selling it to, to end customers and businesses. Could be contractors, [00:14:00] could be really any business. So that’s the main difference. They tend to be pretty heavy when you think about transportation, distribution, inventory management, and replenishment.

With kind of that holy grail of getting the product to the customer at the right place, right time, of course, but also making sure that we’re trying to balance that supply and demand, making sure our, the inventory that our businesses need is in stock. We don’t have too much and we’re not running outta stock.

That is really the name of the game. A lot of these wholesale distributors too will do the final mile and you’ll see that, you’ll see instead of stores, a lot of times they’ll call them branches. So next time you’re driving around, you, you know the big names. And retail, you’ll see them all over the place.

Your Walmarts of the world and so forth. But take a look at the whole, at the distributors you’re not gonna probably see the fancy signs and lighting. They’re not typically having, your, individual consumers going into the stores and looking around and you have the fancy visual display.

It’s gonna be contractors coming in to pick up [00:15:00] parts or components to go out into a job site. So that’s the main differentiator there. And the last one is what Mike talked about, the enablers. And there’s a whole slew of them. And these are folks that provide services or products to the three areas that I just went over.

Retail, whole wholesale distribution, and manufacturing. But it doesn’t mean that a service provider can’t provide another service to a service provider. And what I mean by that, like a third party logistics company is a perfect example. Let’s say I want to outsource a good chunk of my logistics.

I could go to a third party logistics company. They, in turn, will likely be contracting with other providers that are carriers so they can complete all of the various needs and shipments. That exists for their client. So you’ve also got technology providers transportation management systems, warehouse management systems.

We’re seeing a plethora of ai related tools that are coming into the marketplace as well. Mike over here [00:16:00] worked at the Material Handling Institute. They’re the trade association for the products. And equipment, like material handling, equipment, automation, robotics. So there’s a that’s a hot area right now.

If you’re looking for a place that’s really thriving with all the labor challenges and companies trying to, to gain a competitive advantage. It comes down to technology and oftentimes equipment and, to gain that bring out cost in the supply chain and automate some of those mundane proce processes.

Lots of carriers. I won’t get too deep in the weeds here, but when you think about modes, you’ve got you’ve got rail, plenty of product goes through rail. Ocean carriers are typically going across large oceans. To get from one country or one continent to another. Of course, air is typically, it’s gonna be more expensive, but that’s for your, a lot of your high priced or you need things there very quickly in terms of lead times.

Even drones are now being used to get product especially into rural locations. And then obviously. Ride down the highway, you’re gonna see plenty of your 18 wheelers. Typically broken down into two [00:17:00] areas, truckload and less than truckload. One is filling up that truck. So you use all the cube space.

The other is gonna be smaller shipments that are more frequent. You’ve got freight forwarders as well that are handling a lot of that. Back and forth clearing customs working to get shipments from one country to another. And then you’ve got consulting companies from the Big four, your PWC, Ernst and Young KPMG, Deloitte.

You’ve got tons of boutique. Supply chain consulting companies. They got the big strategy firms like McKinsey, Bain, BCG and you’ve also got companies like ours that focus on the talent side here at SEM Talent Group. And then the last one, I won’t go into detail, but the government, the military, lots of logistics.

Inventory, transportation. You’ve got the post office, you’ve got fema, you’ve got Department of Defense. So there’s lots of jobs in that area as well as academia where Mike is, and now Chris are in that space. Learning development, of course, thought leadership. And then you’ve got plenty of [00:18:00] nonprofits, some that provide humanitarian disaster relief aid.

So as you can see. All the industries e even banking and insurance. There, you’re gonna find mostly procurement, a little bit of inventory, a little bit of logistics, but primarily procurement. So it just goes to show that there’s, when you think about the functions and you think about the industries it gets, that’s where it gets very interesting in terms of career paths.

So next we’re gonna go into, we’ve gone down the functions list, we’ve gone down the industry list, and then you wanna think about the types of companies. Chris, over to you to cover that piece.

[00:18:40] Chris Gaffney: Thank you Rodney. And thanks Mike. And this process that we’re talking through or this perspective as we talked through in this episode is really part of.

What we encouraged in that first episode is be thoughtful about these bigger buckets of decisions, right? What aspect of the supply [00:19:00] chain do I think I will enjoy and I have an affinity for? In my case, it was originally logistics. And it ultimately evolved more so into planning, but I was never really that interested in going into manufacturing or procurement, but it’s to each his own.

I know some people who’ve spent time in all those buckets. Then when you talk about the roles inside of each of those functions, if I think about it, I had plenty of first line roles where I was a supervisor, in an operational kind of setting, either in a warehouse or supervising drivers.

And then I got into managing distributors ultimately guiding teams of people who then did those different things. So you, those two axes tell you a lot. But once you just get to those kind of big block decisions, I’d love to work in this industry and I love this area of the supply chain. There’s a whole lot other big decisions.

And I think the first one is kind. You know who you work for, right? And [00:20:00] having seen this in my own setting, work for extremely large companies and working for extremely small companies, and something in the middle, it’s kinda like Goldilocks and the Three Bears they’re just very different, just in terms of sheer size to start, right?

That’s one thing. And even inside of that dimension. A lot of startups are small businesses. They aspire to become very big, but when you start small, there’s a very different dynamic than jumping into a larger company. There are some businesses that are just small and medium sized businesses, and they, they’re successful that way.

They found a niche, whatever that is, product, geography, whatever, in capability. And they’re always gonna be, we can use a term like boutique, that’s where we mean smaller, medium sized, in, in a nice way. In some of those businesses are very successful. And then you deal with the big, large corporations and all of y’all know that I worked at Coke and I worked at PepsiCo and Frito.

But even inside of those kind of [00:21:00] dimensions, I think what the ownership structure is. Matters, right? If you work for a public company, a shareholder owned country or company in the US or in Europe, whatever, working for a publicly traded company has some unique dimensions to it. That accountability to a shareholder, typically more structure, more formalized process.

There are, there’s bureaucracy that comes with that. But there’s some positives that come with that, right? The structure and commitment to training and development, career planning, those things you’re gonna see more so in public companies. But then you get into the next kind of world of that it’s a family owned business, right?

It’s a private company. And by the same to. It very much has pros and cons to it, that long-term focus, right? What we call the owner mindset. We own this place, we’re accountable to people who came before us, and it’s our job to [00:22:00] leave this business in a good state for those who will follow us. It’s a different, we used to talk a lot at Koch around the owner versus employee.

Mindset and those are very real. In some cases, a privately owned business can be more stable, but in perception and reality, you may get different lenses on how decisions are being made regarding advancement in that type of thing. And again, you just don’t have that external accountability that you have in a shareholder owned company where there’s a board.

Over the last 20 years, what’s become very popular around the world are private equity or venture capital backed firms. That’s in, in many cases, that’s where, the venture capital, very much about startups and a lot of cases, the PE or people who’ve gone in and they’re either consolidating an industry, turning around a company.

Those are also very different. And I think what’s clear about those is in those cases, they’re trying to make a lot of progress very [00:23:00] rapidly and trying to be very adept at how they deploy resources to do that. Hey, we want to get in, provide some capital and then have an expectation that we get a return on that capital pretty quickly.

So again. In terms of pros and cons, there’s potential, great war rewards there, but likely as intense a work environment as you’ll see. And then the last big bucket is the NGO in the government world. And we know lots of people who worked in military supply chains and that type of thing.

Again, in many cases, a mission focused framing and historically stability focus. So as I said, those are all pros and cons. And I think, we could say, we want you to really be honest around the environments in which you thrive, but if you’ve not worked there, part of your work is gonna be talking to people who do work in those environments and get a real sense of what it’s like not at a distance, but do your legwork around that.

And, I guess I would say, context matters, right? Culture and pace [00:24:00] matters as much as structure does, right? You may say, I don’t really like this. Org structure, but I love the way we get things done, and I love a fast-paced environment, right? So you know, a startup that’s 20 people may be very exciting, a lot of energy, but the next thing there are no days off in that business and there may not be traditional things like vacations and holidays, and.

Because of the sense of urgency that’s out there. So same thing. A large corporation may give you a nice roadmap, comfort of benefits, but you may feel like decisions never get made right. So those are, that could be just as frustrating. So I think that’s a big deal. I think how leadership comes to life in those environment can vary a lot.

I would say a family owned business is more about. Personal trust, and relationships and public companies are always about that quarterly dynamic and are we hitting the numbers and, what does the street want? And then, as I said [00:25:00] the private equity backed firms are just full gas as the cyclists out there say.

So I think those things are, are very important and decision making process, which, if you’re in the supply chain, we need decisions to get made. Are they all made by one person? Are they distributed? Are they done in a coordinated way? How cross-functional they are? That, that may help you understand based on where you stand in the food chain, are you at the table when decisions are being made?

Are you constantly at the other end of that? And just hoping to get clarity so you can go get things done. So I think, again, back to the evaluation criteria. This is where I think you’re doing a lot of your due diligence. Once you’ve narrowed in on a sector and an area and particular companies you, you can get a lot of visibility in a small company and that can take you a long way. In a big company, you can become very specialized and that may sound great, at a time I worked at Coke, my son worked at a Coke bottler [00:26:00] and he said, I look at my peers and they have a very narrow slice of what they’re involved in.

And he said, I’m involved in all kinds of things and objectively, if I look, he’s now more than 10 years past that smaller environment actually allowed him to accelerate a lot faster because he dealt with sales every day. He dealt with suppliers every day. He dealt with finance every day. He dealt with it every day.

Just a small enough business where you could do that. And then some people are very stability focused and I have other folks I know who have no trouble sleeping on someone’s couch. And so they’re very. Receptive to risk. That’s a huge driver in terms of which of these environments may be more suited, suit suited for you.

And I know people who said, I had no problem sleeping on a couch when I was 20 and I was by myself or 25, but when I’ve got a spouse and I’ve got three kids I’m not enamored to sleep on somebody else’s couch. I’d prefer to have my own and my own roof. So where you are in your career. May influence that.

So I think that’s that environment to [00:27:00] stage of life kind of thing. I, I think selfishly, regardless of where you work, you wanna make sure you’re learning, you wanna make sure you can practice really differentiating skills, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, leadership. You want roles that give you the opportunity to build those muscles, ’cause those can go with you, right?

Those are the portable ones. Those are your defense mechanisms when things occur that are outside of your control, just constantly. I always think of some cases that. A supply chain career is like a video game. Every level you’re trying to grab different tools and things to put into your little tool chest to get onto the next level.

And I think that’s the way to think about all these different stops that are the reality, for most people in their careers today. So I think the last thing is, what do you really like? Do you like certainty, rigor, clear path breadcrumbs? Or you’re like, Nope, gimme a white palette.

And I’ll just, get out there and get my finger paints out and do my own thing [00:28:00] that, that will send you in very different directions. So I think that’s a nice way to think about a third dimension of how to think about this whole macro kind of building out your own career roadmap.

And I’d like to talk about the last one that we as a group think are important, which are really trends, big trends, and how they influence, where you may be going. I think the number one thing that’s out there that is a big differentiator is a big bucket, but we call it’s digital transformation.

And for me, I think that is, and I’d probably even say digital and physical transformation because we’ve got physical automation and digital automation going on at the same time. And I think if you’re in the supply chain, that’s, you’re not gonna. Sit that one out. Big company or small? It’s coming to you now or very soon.

I think that big corollary to this is the whole data literacy. We’ve moved from a place where that was a specialist kind of [00:29:00] capability to, that’s an all skate. And we have a couple other things that are out there. I think sustainability has been a big deal. But what it looks like is evolved or has evolved.

And then I think the same thing’s true around work models. We’ve gone from, nobody went to an office to, we’re working real hard to get people back in the office. And however the, these pendulum swing, I think it’s, to be determined. I think the one that underpins all of those for us is, a good news, bad news kind of story, but it’s that frontline talent gap that exists in any, large manufacturing warehouse, physical fulfillment center.

There’s space to be had at all levels from frontline operations roles, frontline leadership, all the way up to facility multi-site. And leading those large supply chains. We see it all the time, Rodney, with the searches that come by, come across your desk. We still deal with the reality. I think I saw 5 million people are gonna retire this [00:30:00] year.

A chunk of those are in the supply chain. The field has is of interest in terms of supply chain and operations, but there’s still lots of people who shy away from it. There are still negative perceptions of these manufacturing jobs, whether it to be the quality of the operating life or a trend to offshoring is the US serious and committed to this?

And then I think I’ll reemphasize, what’s happening with automation and the impact on jobs perceived actual now or later in, in my view, all those things are opportunities. So here’s the way I want. To offer advice, and I’ve heard this, so I’m not, I don’t think I’m smoking my own exhaust here is so many of these big trends allow you to be a translator.

If you can gain applied skills in these spaces, how do you come in and help your organization take advantage of them? So in the world of digital and physical transformation, how do you translate that into value? And in [00:31:00] my view. That’s where I don’t want you to sit on the sideline with these things. I want you to translate how you can embrace ai, physical automation and be part of how they be.

They create better business outcomes, right? Whether that’s better customer service. Lower costs, faster response. If you’re an enabler, how do you enable successful implementations of those technologies versus boats that have run up onto the shoals and not had a good outcome? I think anything around technology is all about, not just the technology solving the problem, but the people who can put it in the right business context to where we can really improve an existing process that’s out there.

W when I talk about data literacy, it’s about translating analysis into action. We’re now in the world where we don’t wanna look in the rear view mirror. We wanna use the information at hand to be able guide better decisions to set us up for success in the future. And if you [00:32:00] can be that. You know that person and set the tone every Monday morning as your team comes in around, here’s what’s gonna be critical for us to succeed and win this week.

That insight will take you lots of places. When it comes to sustainability, I think translation is really critical because we’re in a space where a lot of. The focus on sustainability has run into headwinds. And so I think you’ve gotta be someone who’s really thoughtful, right? Find the thread, the needle where we get some economic value, right?

We get some service value but we’re also winning from from a sustainability standpoint. They’re there. They require more rigor in terms of your thought process in many cases. A lot more outside in thinking that’s out there. So I, I think the goal is moving sustainability from a compliance mode.

We’re trying to meet somebody’s expectations to this is how we compete. I think I’ll comment on the last two. When it gets into the [00:33:00] whole idea of where you do work I think your reality is you need to be comfortable. Being in somebody’s office, you need to be comfortable being in a city where that office is.

And then I think you earn the right to be somewhat hybrid by being a distinguished employee by, doing what you say you were going to do by being responsive, by being available. And I think that’s. The people I know who do this best, they don’t abuse that, or privilege and they help the pendulum swing in a right way where it’s a win for the company and it is a win for the employee.

So think about it from that standpoint. Last point on, that, that whole gap, this is a supply and demand field. And of all the things we look at, we want you to be thoughtful around. I’d rather be in a space where me as a potential solve to a capacity need in a different part of the supply chain.

I’d rather be in a place where there are more jobs than there are people hunting jobs, because that gives me a [00:34:00] better chance to get the best situation. So I just think of a very pragmatic view of that. So I would say. My bigger theme for you is the use, the idea of being a translator to differentiate yourself.

Those are my 2 cents. And I think if you do that, if you could connect data people, technology and drive that to clear plans, clear actions you’re gonna be the person that, you know, back to the old days when we played kickball, you’re gonna get picked early and often. And I think that’s probably the best advice I can offer you.

[00:34:30] Rodney Apple: Wow, that was a lot of information that would just impact. So if you’re in college or even junior level in your career, early on in your career, it’s it’s a lot to think about and ponder. But don’t get stuck in the analysis paralysis mode. Best thing you can do is follow the advice we just gave it.

It’s is do a lot of research. Don’t jump into something, don’t, it’s okay to take those recruiter calls, okay. To apply to roles, you really should have some good [00:35:00] foundational understanding. When you think about the functions that exist within supply chain. You think about the industries and Chris just covered.

A lot of stuff that people don’t think about, which is, your company sizes and how they differ from small to mid-size to large to even the ownership model. It makes a huge difference. And I can say that from the recruiter chair. We work across all industries, all things supply chain startups to.

Walmart sized companies. And I, we deal with this day in, day out and it, it is important to try to get it right and, but also know that you have to sometimes just get out there and take a chance. And you may find that. I tried this. I don’t like it, but at least you can check off a box knowing that this is not my space, this is not where I want to be.

And then pivot into another area because the further you get into your career, and especially if you are in a job that you feel like you’re stuck once you get into that. You’re a [00:36:00] specialized person or you’re locked into one function or one industry over time, it can be a little bit more challenging to, to pivot into a new industry or pivot into a new function.

Example could be, I’ve been in transportation my entire career working for a carrier or three pl and you want to get that breadth of experience and procurement and it’s, it can be really. Challenging. So I would advise if you’re the kind of person that likes variety and you think you may wanna, you wanna lead big teams, you really do, as Chris said earlier, you have to seek out, seek that breadth of experience out.

Go into those operations roles, you’re gonna get a degree in leadership by doing just that. And it’s certainly gonna make you more appealing. As you get further into your career and you’re starting to compete for some of those leadership roles, because think about the pyramid as you at the bottom, you’ve got the, a lot of variety and a lot of individual contributors, right?

That’s where the bulk. People work within [00:37:00] supply chain in those factories and distribution centers. And as you go up the pyramid to mid management, the middle, there’s gonna be less opportunities. And if you go further up into those head of supply chain roles or broader C-suite roles, there’s only so many of those in every company, just a handful.

And so to get that. End-to-end supply chain experience. You really have to be intentful with your career when it comes to planning and sometimes it’s making a lateral move maybe even a step backwards to get that experience that you need to climb that next ladder rung on the ladder, if you will.

Anything else you want to comment, Mike and Chris about this about this episode and what we’ve covered?

[00:37:41] Mike Ogle: I had a couple of small things. One of those would be the whole automation side. Rodney, you’d mentioned that, I was at MHI for over 15 years, and one of the things that I’ve noticed in these past 10 or so is just the incredible growth of interest [00:38:00] in automation.

As people get more and more expensive and it gets things change faster and it’s harder to find people sometimes to plug into the particular roles, then we end up seeing a whole lot of automation. And don’t think of automation as just AI or just robotics, although that’s certainly there. There’s all kinds of automation that is specialty kinds of automation, some of it general purpose kinds of automation, and there’s been tremendous growth.

Of interest and MHII was talking with some people the other day that that are there. Who are seeing just record attendance at shows and the size of shows and the interest of all the different kinds of jobs that are out there to try to put in these types of systems to be able to understand customers problems.

So there’s great opportunity there. And a second point that I wanted to make goes back to something when Chris was talking about sustainability. I like to teach my students about really two, [00:39:00] two kinds of sustainability. One is a thing where people think of greener and environmental and that side of sustainability.

And energy and such. But another one is also the sustainability of your business model. Being able to understand risk and resilience. Can we continue doing these kinds of practices? Where is that going to lead us? Are we going to, are we painting ourselves into a corner in some way? Are being able to understand the whole risk and insurance and resilience and threats that you know, that there might be out there.

The things that have happened in the past decade or two with a lot of very disruptive types of things in supply chains have led a lot of companies to open up more and more positions or to do a lot of consulting in that area of being able to better understand what could bite us. We need to be able to understand how to be resilient.

So that’s my two.[00:40:00][00:40:01] Rodney Apple: Thank you for that, Mike. Chris, anything else?

[00:40:03] Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I would offer two, two things. Number one, and I’ve told this story probably on one of our podcasts before I, I was not a great career planner. Early on, I just, I said, I’m gonna get washed down the river, like I’m on a raft and I hope it’ll stop at nice places.

And I’m fortunate that it worked out. I don’t advise that anymore. I think you’ve got to be. More intentional and be more planful around your own career because the world, bounces around a lot more than perhaps it did when we came into the market. So I think that’s one thing.

And I think the other thing, again, given those same dynamics, we didn’t speak to it, but. The whole concept of agility for someone in their career. Odds are you’re gonna have to do very different things if you stay in a company. And if you leave and go from one company to another role to role, you’re gonna have [00:41:00] to pick up on a Friday.

Maybe you take a little time off and drop down in a Monday and be effective as rapidly as possible. And the people who can do that well. And demonstrate that I moved from a role in transportation to a role in procurement. I moved from a company that was a brand manufacturer to a services firm, and I was able to be successful.

That’s huge. And you know how do you become more agile? You need to be open to run to the fire, take on the challenge. Be curious. You need to be a change leader versus a follower. You need to be very effective in interacting with others. Again, some of the things we talked about in our other base podcasts, but be a student of agility and you will be more prepared again for opportunities that come your way or changes that you have to act on.[00:42:00][00:42:01] Rodney Apple: That’s a great add , Chris and Mike, and I’ll just, I’ll wrap it up with just. These trends, we can certainly get plenty of detail on industries and functions. There’s no shortage of information. But you’ve gotta be a trend follower and you’ve gotta understand, what’s going up and what’s going down and what’s leading to some of these impacts, whether it be geopolitical, obviously global trade policy changes is driving a lot of different monumental changes in supply networks and how people bring product in or how they source product, whether it’s globally or domestically. And things change and evolve and, you really need to pay attention to that because that can certainly impact your career. And it could also lead into, jumping in some areas that can be a lot more lucrative than other areas too.

And so you have to factor in the trends. As well. And stay, keep a pulse on it. Good places or, there’s no shortage of information online, the trade associations that we just referred to with [00:43:00] MHI, you’ve got a SCM, you’ve got C-S-C-M-P, it’s, it’s make sure you’re subscribing to these newsletters.

There’s if you were to look at my desk, you’d see a big stack of magazines. I think I get all of them. And it’s just great information to follow ’cause it can certainly shape your career. And it’s like Chris said, it’s better than just floating down the river with no plan at all, and hoping you land in some nice places.

Love that analogy, Chris. Great stuff. Today going through the core supply chain functions, industry sectors, we’ve talked a lot about trends shaping the future of supply chain careers. It just goes to show that the field is very flexible. There’s lots of mobility and it is certainly evolving probably quicker than other functions that are out there in the business world.

Next week when we hit episode three, we’re going to be focused on. Okay. Now that we’ve got a sense of the kind of work we want to do versus what we don’t want to do, what our strengths are, we’ve got some, [00:44:00] maybe by now we’ve landed on a few industries or functions that we wanna start out with now.

Now what do we do? We need to start putting a job search plan together, and before you execute on that, you need to get. The two primary tools that you’re gonna use to market yourself. So we’re gonna start out with, getting your resume in good order, optimizing the resume and your LinkedIn profile.

We’ll cover that. And then once you have those two core marketing documents for yourself in place we’re gonna lead into like, how do you map out a plan. Right now we’re seeing a lot of, signs in the employment market. We’re seeing layoffs tariffs.

We’re gonna see what’s gonna happen there, but. At the same time there’s a lot of needs out there. But, how do you put a plan together knowing there’s likely more competition out there vying for lesser jobs that’s gonna land you those interviews and get you into your a place that aligns with your goals and objectives.

So we’ll dive into that. [00:45:00] So for now if you like this episode, you know somebody that could benefit, please share it with a colleague or a student or a mentee. You can visit s scm talent.com to explore a lot more of these resources. So until next time, keep building your supply chain career with Pur purpose and with passion, and we’ll see you next time around.