Over the past month, I have been thrilled to work with some of the top procurement blogs in sharing some insights about procurement capability improvement.  In this post, I will bring all 10 of my guest posts into a step-by-step model for you to deliver procurement capability improvement in your organization.

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Here are links to these guest posts with a synopsis of each…

Improving Procurement Capability, Part I:  Separating Requirements From Preferences In Procurement Job Descriptions – A procurement job description can determine the degree of success the organization will or will not achieve through its procurement people.  This post on Procurement Insights will help you write procurement job descriptions in a way that strikes the perfect balance between not discouraging very qualified candidates while still preventing unqualified candidates from wasting your time.

Improving Procurement Capability, Part II:  Deciding On The Education Procurement Candidates Should Have – Is the university education that procurement professionals have really changing over time?  Some hiring companies’ job ads may lead you to believe that the true pace of change is faster than it actually is.  This post on My Purchasing Center helps you ground your procurement department’s educational requirements in reality without compromising the quality of candidates you are seeking.

Improving Procurement Capability, Part III:  Deciding On The Experience Procurement Candidates Should Have – Industry experience?  Procurement experience?  Category experience?  Which of these should be important when filling open procurement positions?  This post on My Purchasing Center teaches you the circumstances where each type of experience is most important.

Improving Procurement Capability, Part IV:  Finding Evidence That Shows Candidates’ Seriousness About Procurement – Do want to hire a procurement professional who is interested in procurement?  Or a procurement professional that lives and breathes procurement?  Naturally, you’d prefer the latter.  This post on Procurement Insights shares the fine details on how to distinguish the difference between those two types of candidates.

Improving Procurement Capability, Part V:  Matching Procurement Salaries To Procurement Qualifications – An “average procurement salary” isn’t the best starting point for determining the pay assigned to a procurement position. The qualifications you want the successful candidate to have will drive how much you will have to pay.  This post on The Strategic Sourceror will help you gauge how to arrive at the right salary for the right qualifications or vice versa.

Improving Procurement Capability, Part VI:  Sourcing Procurement Talent– Using general job sites to advertise your open procurement positions will result in you sifting through an avalanche of unqualified candidates.  But you don’t have to relegate yourself to hiring only people you know to avoid that nightmare.  This post on Buyers Meeting Point shares some secrets from finding those few gems of procurement candidates without being inundated with applications you’d never consider responding to.

Improving Procurement Capability, Part VII:  Vetting Procurement Talent – Behavioral interviewing has long been considered a powerful way of identifying great candidates, where only the strong survive an interview.  This post on Buyers Meeting Point – complete with actual procurement interview questions – will show you how to use behavioral interviewing in a procurement interview.

Improving Procurement Capability, Part VIII:  Assessing A Procurement Team’s Skills – Is your procurement team great, average, or poor?  Would an outsider agree with you?  This post on Sourcing Innovation covers all of your options for subjectively and objectively assessing your procurement team’s skills.

Improving Procurement Capability, Part IX:  Training A Procurement Team – Whether it be online training, on-site training, conferences, in-house training, or purchasing certification programs, a procurement leader has no shortage of options for improving the capabilities of his or her team.  Even though any choice is a better choice than doing nothing, some procurement leaders get caught up in over-analyzing their choices.  This post on Sourcing Innovation clearly explains the advantages and disadvantages of each so you can home in on the option that best fits your needs and constraints.

Improving Procurement Capability, Part X:  Measuring the Value of Procurement Capability Improvement – Once you’ve improved procurement capabilities, how do you know exactly how successful your efforts were? This post on Strategic Sourceror provides methodologies for measuring your success.

Recommended Reading

Fact-Based Negotiation: Final Thoughts
NLPA’s Procurement Salary Report Featured On Buyers Meeting Point Show!
Telecom: What Can a Consultant Do For You?
Purchasing & Supply Management Salaries Webinar This Coming Wednesday!
Emotion Is Too Absent From Today’s Procurement Negotiations