Opinion

Talent sourcing

Finding – and then keeping – intelligent, business-savvy people is the toughest challenge in purchasing today

by Luc Volatier

The scarcest resource for purchasing executives nowadays is not steel or any other commodity available in limited supply. Our worst nightmare is the sourcing of talented individuals ready to join our teams.

From CPOs heading purchasing teams of thousands to the chief buyer looking for his first team member, we are all chasing the same game. So how do we end up winners? What are the basic ingredients we should be looking for in the people we employ?

The first thing is social and professional etiquette. You don’t have to become an expert in this often forgotten art, but there is a minimum level of expectation. It’s something you obtain during the very first years of your childhood; if you missed it, it is almost impossible to catch up. Yes, it is normal to wait for everybody having lunch together to be served before you start eating, even if they are all from a less-than-favourite supplier! If you doubt what I am talking about, just ask salespeople – they will have loads of examples of ill-mannered purchasers.

Second, he or she needs a solid educational background. Ideally this would be a technical background supported by an MBA from a leading business school. But even this is not enough. As the management writer Henry Mintzberg, a professor at McGill University in Montreal, says: “We need managers, not MBAs.”

We want people with real business acumen: a streetwise attitude you learn mainly by experience, taking risks and getting “burnt”. Very little of this real-world learning comes from working on a case study in a lecture theatre or breakout room.

Third, what about the 1.4kg of grey matter we have between our ears? It has to be used in an efficient way. Yes, all human adults have roughly the same brain, but what we get out of it is so different. We want to recruit people who really put their brains to work, who are switched on and like using them in an analytical and structured way.

The fourth thing we want is passion. Not the French or Italian romantic version, but a real, adrenalin-filled, bone-shaking passion for business. You need to be able to unlock it, capture it and make it contagious. If you are in purchasing, you need to influence and convince so many people. Passion is key to your success.

When you combine the art of dealing with people with passion, drive and energy, and mix it all up with the brainpower, it is like putting plutonium in contact with uranium – you get an amazing reaction. I’m sure you’ve seen examples around you.
Now, package all of this up into a person who has real international experience, who is used to living and working outside of their home country – a person so international that it is difficult for you to guess their nationality. They are at home anywhere in the world, equally adept at eating with a fork, chopsticks or the right hand.

So you’ve identified the qualities you are looking for, now you have to start hunting for the people who have them. Yes, they could work in the purchasing team of another company. Even more likely, they could be in another function within your own organisation. They might even come from a different company and a different function; who said you can’t change company and function at the same time?

You the purchaser now become the salesperson. You have to convince them to join you. You have to sell your vision, your function, your company, your industry – you! If you want passion to be contagious, you better have the bug.

Succeeded in your sales role? Hunted down your prey? They’ve joined? Feel relieved? Not really, because you now have to make sure that no other purchasing team comes hunting and poaches your new star.

With purchasers having budget responsibilities of hundreds of millions, even billions, of euros, you understand the strategic impact these people could have on the performance of your company if you have them working for you. The same is equally true if they work for your competitor. Yes, you will always have the steady people able to serve your factories or your offices. But the impact of a handful of very talented professionals will make a dramatic difference to your company results.

So purchaser becomes salesperson, buyer becomes supplier: it’s a topsy-turvy world. If you are winning the game and becoming a magnet for talent, once in a while you may be able to enjoy the thrill of being the hunted.

Luc Volatier is vice-president of purchasing worldwide at Numico in Amsterdam (luc.volatier@numico.com)