Remote or Onsite: Supply Chain Hiring Strategies to Find The Best Talent
Introduction
Are you an employer desperate to find the best supply chain talent for your rapidly evolving supply chain organization? There are a few things you can do to improve hiring options and gain access to a deeper talent pool. Before posting and praying, it’s always best to consult with talent professionals to better gauge how easy it is to hire across these different verticals and industries.
You may create an unwitting delay in an important and strategic hire by not working with the right people to determine the best hiring strategy.
You might be able to enhance your talent pool while also reducing the hiring runway.
The question we want to address focuses on whether it’s more efficient to hire for remote positions in supply chain?
What is the State of Remote Work?
We all know what happened in 2020. Necessity being the mother of invention created a seismic shift in workplace norms. Remote working spread like wildfire as employers grappled with a new reality. In supply chain, a severe talent shortage was emerging which further exaggerated some compensation packages in order to compete for much needed talent. Compensation packages escalated above and beyond norms as employers got into bidding wars with one another over scarce supply chain talent.
A lot of the labor force relocated to more desirable locales they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access due to remote employment. As the pendulum swung back towards employers, hybrid workplace scenarios trended upwards as empty offices gave way to sparsely populated workspaces. However, more and more employers decided that they wanted their employees back in the office, despite a relative lack of concrete data to suggest that in-office work was more productive than hybrid or remote.
Regardless, folks began returning to the office in somewhat record numbers. A Robert Half study conducted in the first half of 2026 showed that the number of fully in office roles went up from 65% in Q4 2025 to 87% in Q2 2026.
While trends across the broader workforce indicate a return to office, supply chain has some mixed results. As usual, it’s hard to apply the same rules to the supply chain labor force, but we can at least provide a snapshot.
Supply Chain Hiring in 2026
Highly specialized supply chain jobs aren’t always easy to fill. Whether it’s in the corporate boardroom or on the front lines of a plant, specialization typically is required. Factor in massive technological disruptions, global trade conflicts, sourcing interruptions, and war, and you have a recipe for disaster. These disruptions are just part of what makes supply chain hiring so difficult. Without specialized talent professionals, it can be a long and arduous process. And even with the expert assistance of these guides, the positions can be extremely hard to fill if the employers don’t structure the role in a manner that’s most conducive to not only efficient hiring but attracting the best talent.
Supply chain is all about competition. If you move it, buy it, or sell it, it has a supply chain. In order for your supply chain organization to work better than your competition’s, you need the best talent. That being the case, mining a rural Tennessee talent pool for a job that can be done remotely might not be the best idea. Are you limiting yourself to fewer local options as a trade off for on-site work?
The accelerated impact of AI has also made these decisions much more complex. “The demand for AI skills in supply chain is accelerating at a rate that far exceeds the broader labor market, creating a widening talent gap that organizations cannot close through hiring alone,” said Tess Frenzel, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice.
The article continues to lay out a 387% increase in demand for supply chain roles requiring AI skills from 2023 to 2026. They arrived at that number after analyzing millions of job postings during those 3 years.
Given this surge in hiring needs, would it not behoove employers to seek a deeper talent pool whenever possible? These are very important positions, tasked with adapting to a new landscape of logistics, procurement, transportation, and shipping, distribution centers and third party providers, all using new technology to help streamline analytics and operations. All the while, the core tenets of leadership should still apply. Communication, personnel management, and other soft skills have almost become more important than in the recent past.
How are employers supposed to find high quality leaders with these specialized skill sets in supply chain, technology, and leadership and do so in an efficient manner? Do you even know where to look?
What Are Supply Chain Talent Professionals Saying?
Without overstating the obvious, yes, you can make hiring more efficient by designating certain roles as remote.
But, it’s not always that simple.
Companies are making distinctions between corporate and site-based roles when choosing whether to go remote. Clearly many of these site based jobs can’t be done remotely. Plant and warehouse distribution leadership typically requires more of an onsite presence that provides leaders with direct access to people, processes, and physical operations. Sourcing, planning, S&OP, analytics and external transportation provide employers with more options and flexibility in location.
Heavy manufacturing and warehousing organizations carry a more hands-on requirement, limiting remote options. Essentially, it’s the difference between make or buy. Companies outsourcing manufacturing will have more flexibility in their hiring strategies. These supply chain teams may only manage external makers, suppliers, and contracts for logistics providers. Insisting that these leaders report only to one office might actually be a detriment to their job.
There’s also experience to consider. Some candidates understand the value of face time and being able to interact personally with the bosses. Being present provides greater visibility, relationship-building opportunities, and informal learning that’s harder to get from a distance.
Employers are also making choices about hiring based on their experiential knowledge. For example, a large food service distributor needs to hire a highly specialized planning leader. The role requires AI fluency, highly developed leadership skills, and a demonstrated knowledge of a pretty niche industry segment. Change transformation and risk mitigation also are key aspects for success in this role. Despite this role being located in a major metropolitan area, that combination of relevant experience and mature skill sets creates a pretty shallow talent pool. Not limiting the geography of the search allows the employer to prioritize the right experience rather than proximity to headquarters.
The same principle applies to the search itself. Is it cheaper and more effective for us to do this ourselves locally or expand our reach with specialized talent professionals who can guide the search in a more efficient manner. As positions grow more specialized, so does the process by which you fill them. Combining deep planning or transformation experience with technology, machine learning, and specific industry knowledge can feel like you’re trying to thread an increasingly small needle. Limiting geography can just further complicate the matter.
Conclusion
Supply chain recruiters are seeing remote work become less of an all or nothing decision and more about the nature and complexity of the role. Some roles warrant broadening the search in order to access the best talent and not just “good enough.” Without increased access to more candidates, employers may not adequately understand that the best talent is actually available. It just requires a more nuanced approach.
But remote isn’t always the answer either. Some candidates understand that career acceleration can be limited by not being onsite and developing the hands-on interpersonal leadership skills and learning through osmosis. On the talent side, consider what chapter of your career are you in? Perhaps remote won’t serve this chapter as well as being onsite. These supply chain talent professionals don’t think that remote hiring is necessarily better. But they do think employers need to be deliberate about which requirements are truly necessary for the role and which ones just make an already difficult search even harder.
There are always solutions to these problems. Today’s supply chain offers myriad disruptions and complications but the people involved can ease a lot of these transitions. Talk to talent professionals if you’re unsure about the quality of your local talent pool and if expanding the search is best. You may even gain some other valuable insight on org structure, title, and compensation packages that you didn’t know could help you attract the best talent.
About The Author
Rodney Apple is the Founder and Managing Partner of SCM Talent Group and host of the Supply Chain Careers Podcast. With more than two decades of executive search experience, Rodney has partnered with Fortune 500 companies, private equity firms, and high-growth organizations to recruit supply chain leaders across operations, planning, procurement, manufacturing, logistics, and executive leadership. He has led executive searches for organizations including Generac, Cummins, Kimberly-Clark, Wendy’s, McKesson, US Steel, White Cap, Berlin Packaging, Les Schwab, Yamaha Motor Corporation, APL Logistics, GEODIS, Berner Foods, and Rochester Midland, among many others. Having interviewed thousands of executives and led hundreds of successful placements, Rodney brings a unique perspective on what separates exceptional supply chain leaders from the rest of the market.
Rodney’s work as a career coach at APICS as well as his dedication to providing insightful thought leadership for professionals and executives alike has made him into a trusted expert on the evolution of Supply Chain talent and best practices for placing transformational leaders.
