4 Procurement Professional Development Profiles, Part I By Charles Dominick, SPSM, SPSM2

Editor’s Note:  Charles is founder, president and chief procurement officer of Next Level Purchasing, which offers the SPSM (Senior Professional in Supply Management) Certification.

Be sure to check out Charles’ Purchasing Certification Blog.

I was recently reflecting on my final year of college.  During this time, I was interviewing for jobs.  At that time, the economy was doing much better than it is today when interviews seem to be few and far between.  I think that I went on about 24 interviews in a month or two.

There was a common topic of conversation that came up during these interviews:  relocation.  A few of the executives with whom I interviewed said that the key to their success was taking every position move (whether lateral or upward) that they were asked to take, even if it involved relocation.

I started wondering if that strategy continued to pay off for them in the years since.  Or if they became one of those people that you hear saying “I was so loyal to that company.  I moved all around the country to serve them.  How could they have laid me off, even though the economy tanked?”  Then, I started drawing parallels in my mind between relocation and professional development.

In my line of work, I see many different approaches to procurement professional development that companies and individuals have.  Two dimensions of these approaches are (a) who selects professional development opportunities, and (b) the degree to which professional development opportunities are utilized.

For the first dimension, professional development opportunities are usually selected by either the company or the individual.  For the second dimension, professional development opportunities are usually utilized to a near maximum degree or to a near minimum degree.

The combination of these dimensions fit neatly onto a 2×2 matrix.

In the context of professional development, this matrix reveals four types or “profiles” of procurement professionals.  I will describe each profile in a little more detail in Part II of this series.