Right Size Your Supply Chain Recruiting Team

Editors note: I first met Rodney Apple in 2015, when I moderated a round table on challenges in the supply chain work force at the APICS conference in Las Vegas. At the time, recruiting, training and retaining supply chain talent was one of the most talked about topics at supply chain conferences. Since then, I think it's safe to say the issue has only gained in importance. This is the fourth of ten columns by Apple that we'll publish on SCMR.com over the next three weeks. As always, you can feel free to email me with your thoughts at [email protected]. Bob Trebilcock, editorial director, Supply Chain Management Review.

Having worked on the corporate side of recruiting for half of my 23-year career in recruitment, which includes leading supply chain recruitment for major corporations such as The Home Depot, Kimberly-Clark, The Coca-Cola Company and Cummins, I have seen my fair share of talent acquisition programs that have ranged from good to great to poor. One of my most important observations is this: The most successful employers understand how to right size their talent acquisition departments to allow for a proactive recruiting function versus a reactive, “squeaky wheel gets the grease” function.

They also view their recruiting departments as a strategic, value-added function and invest ample resources into optimizing their recruiting teams, processes and systems in efforts to attract, source and hire top supply chain talent.

On the other hand, inefficient employers view their recruiting departments as a transactional, paper-pushing organization where the top source of candidates are typically yielded from job postings, mostly active candidates, versus direct sourcing passive candidates. This is akin to fishing from a small pond for talent versus the ocean.

What Makes Hiring in Supply Chain Difficult?
Hiring in supply chain is much different and typically more complex than other corporate functions. This is due to the diversity of functions, departments, job titles, jobs levels and job locations that commonly exist across within corporate offices and operations, such as factories, distribution centers and other operations.

Other factors that have increased the level of difficulty and complexity in recent years can be attributed to rapid advancements in supply chain technologies, globalization, and a major supply chain talent shortage.

The Importance of a Strong Talent Acquisition Department
I've seen many employers make the mistake of understaffing and under resourcing their talent acquisition departments, especially on the supply chain side. This “do more with less” approach that many corporations deploy is a driver of poor performance that leads to negative candidate experiences, and ultimately forces the business to suffer when they can't fill their job vacancies in a timely manner.

Employers that treat their recruiting departments like a “red-headed stepchild: are putting their supply chains and businesses at risk, seeing that supply chain is a key contributor to value creation for most businesses. You just can't afford to take this kind of risk in today's ever-changing business world, especially with the tightening labor market in supply chain and low unemployment rates that exist in most industries.

Aligning the Right Tasks with the Right People
When it comes to right sizing your recruiting team, it's critical to align the right tasks with the right people to enable success. For example, a very common mistake employers make is having their recruiters handle administrative tasks such as interview scheduling, escorting candidates to interviews, offer letter development, and background check administration.

The more administrative work that you assign to your recruiters, the less time they have to spend on sourcing and making contact with top supply chain candidates. Don't you want your recruiters spending most of their time on finding the very best talent instead of performing administrative tasks?

Allocating these administrative tasks to an administrative assistant or staffing coordinator will free up time for your recruiters to focus on more value-added work, such as direct sourcing and pipeline development. Focusing on direct sourcing talent instead of relying on a “post & pray” recruitment strategy is critical for success, especially in a tightening labor market and with major shortages of talent within the supply chain discipline.

Always Have Backup, Contingency Recruitment Resources in Place
It's imperative to not only have the right recruitment resources in place internally, but also to have ample contingency resources to handle spikes in hiring or turnover within your recruiting department. This can vary from having access to independent or hourly recruiters to supplement your full-time team or a list of pre-approved supply chain recruiting agencies in place to turn to help with your most difficult and critical their talent needs.

If you need to outsource recruiting efforts to a search firm, look for sourcers and recruiters with deep supply chain recruiting experience as they'll understand the complexities, will know how to property assess candidates, and can leverage their supply chain contacts and relationships to expedite hiring for your organization.

When an organization focuses on developing their recruiting team, the quality and quantity of hires will improve as well as the ability to grow your organization.

Rodney L. Apple is the managing partner of SCM Talent Group, a supply chain recruiting agency. He can be reached at [email protected].

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