purchasing
Stage 1: Tips for entering the industry
Let’s take a look at the future of the procurement industry and how to plan the career of the purchaser. Theoretically speaking, the purchasing office of a foreign company with only a few people in the country should be the best choice for purchasing career development. It is also helpful to learn purchasing skills and multi-functional development, which is also helpful for future job-hopping and career development. Moreover, the salary is also good. Not low. However, due to the excessive and imperfect support of the system and various aspects of the company, it is too difficult for small offices and such procurement centers (IPO) to purchase. Once you are incompetent or face a very likely change in the company’s China strategy, the position will be extremely unstable. Therefore, caution is recommended for this “high-risk” career path. To put it bluntly, don’t enter the so-called international purchasing center or office with a few people just after graduation.
An excellent procurement career can be roughly summarized into four main stages. Stage one is the first step. You must first enter the procurement industry. Because foreign companies have higher requirements for academic qualifications and foreign languages, entering the procurement department of domestic private companies is the first step to enter the procurement industry, because the threshold is very low. Of course, due to the difficulty of high procurement requirements, cronyism within the company, and extremely low salaries, this first step can take one to two years, and the purpose is to label yourself with “procurement” experience.
Phase 2: Gold-plating of large enterprises
The second step is to enter a large-scale foreign investment or joint venture as a general purchaser. Although the salary is still not high throughout the purchasing career, this step is the main stage for systematically learning the purchasing process, purchasing skills, and cultivating one’s own foreign language and communication skills. During this period, the time is about 5 years, and the goal is to promote the position to purchasing supervisor or senior purchasing engineer. Next, refer to the following table and start planning your own future.
Stage 3: Salary raise and promotion
The third stage is to switch from a large company to a medium-sized company and become the head or manager of the purchasing department. Salary will increase significantly. The professional time at this stage is recommended to be 8 to 10 years. This jump is impossible for most people. Why? Because people are always respectful, large companies have a good environment, large purchases, and perfect systems. Therefore, when an average person arrives at a large enterprise, he or she will not move forward anymore. He or she will “developing” with the enterprise and prepare for retirement. However, the times have changed. We look at those who continue to suddenly resign from the world’s top 500 foreign companies, or are laid off, most of them are such people. They continued to search for jobs, but after half a year they still couldn’t find a suitable one. Finally, they found a tasteless job. The department leader was ten years younger than him and her, and his salary was less than half of the original. Every day I was depressed, even crying. Then, they will classify their situation as a mid-life crisis.
In fact, it was he/she who didn’t know the current affairs and didn’t know how to make progress, and wasted the time. Please remember that during the transition period from Phase 2 to Phase 3, there will be 15 years for you to prepare before and after. There is an MBA here. Don’t forget to read. The director’s location is very useful. Reluctant to pay the tuition? Then you can use the lowest cost and time and energy to get a master’s certificate or a master’s degree in engineering.
Stage 4: Phoenix Nirvana
The last step, the fourth stage, is to leave the procurement industry and completely change careers. There are two directions to choose from. Go to the new company to be senior executives, such as sales manager, managing director, operations director, factory director, vice president, and other senior management positions. Someone would like to ask “Why to abandon the previous 15 years of purchasing career and switch to another industry?” The reason is simple. Purchasing is the department where the company spends money. An old purchaser is not seen in the company as the salary increases. And the ceiling effect of the career path of purchasing is obvious. The purchasing director is basically the highest position in your career, and rarely can be given the important task of vice president and other senior managers, let alone enter the company’s core management.
So, when you are 40 years old and you are still doing sourcing, in fact, your career has reached a bottleneck stage. At this time, if you continue to engage in procurement work, the next career declines, it is a high probability event. If you leave the procurement industry, why can you directly transfer to other companies to become senior managers? This depends on the main content of procurement.
When you have been purchasing for 15 years, your greatest value does not lie in how rich your purchasing experience is, nor does it lie in which industry’s purchasing tips you know, but in the social relationships you have developed and accumulated over the years in your purchasing career, and with suppliers, The relationship established by senior executives, private business owners, competitors, friends in the circle, and well-informed people in the industry, is the greatest source of procurement.
Relying on the social relationships cultivated through many years of procurement work, there are countless examples of career transitions to senior managers in real workplaces. This is the main channel for procurement career breakthroughs.
Old purchase to start a business
Another option is to start a business. Relying on previous social relationships, industry resources, understanding of purchased products, proficiency in business operations and business operations, and finally embarking on the road of entrepreneurship, this is another major path for the successful breakthrough of the procurement career. . Please note that starting a business is not so easy. Therefore, the entrepreneurial business here can not leave the production, and after the profit substantially exceeds the salary, it can be released. You are all 40 years old, and are you waiting for the state to provide you with a pension to 65? Still one year old. In order to emphasize the importance, we will post this roadmap again. Take a look, where are you at?
Key points
Looking at the entire four-step procurement career plan, the first difficulty lies in the leap from stage two to stage three, that is, the transition from large enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises. Most people don’t see such a career promotion opportunity, and they can’t get past it. Among them are the worship of large companies and the inherent advantages of large companies with large purchases, so they are unwilling to give in to “small” companies.
What’s more, it is to stay in a large company and settle for the status quo, and want to gradually take the career path from buyer to purchasing supervisor to manager and finally to the director. In fact, in a large company, you can be a purchasing manager before the age of 40, and you are already rare; you are lucky to be a director at 50, and retirement is just around the corner at this time. Even if people can successfully become the purchasing director, most of them cannot meet their own requirements for financial freedom. No matter from the perspective of money accumulation, or the pros and cons of the career development path, it can’t be achieved. In the entire procurement career planning, the second difficulty lies in the leap from stage three to stage four, which is the leap to successfully switch careers and completely leave the procurement work. Purchasing work, the main experience for you to complete lies in the cultivation of social relationships and entrepreneurial qualities, rather than the accumulation of purchasing skills. If you only see the latter, you only see the opportunity to transform from a large company to a medium-sized company, but ignore the former’s transition to a senior manager or entrepreneur based on the accumulation of “relationships”, then you are also unsuccessful. Purchases. In this way, you can only complete the first step of career planning, which is the requirement of innovation, but you can never create wealth, let alone financial freedom.
Above, we have divided it into six points to explain the current career success path that is most suitable for Chinese procurement personnel. You can refer to it and learn from each other. There are as many purchases as there are sales. According to the career roadmap described in this table, if you take every step well, then a successful purchasing career will come.