A supply chain or procurement search can fail in two ways. You hire the wrong person and spend a year managing around the gap. Or you run a long search, lose the people you wanted, and start over. Both cost money, and the second one is easier to prevent than most employers think.
In our experience the problems cluster in three places: the role as defined, the process as run, and the offer as made.
Fix the role before you post it
A search that starts before the basics are settled tends to change shape halfway through. Candidates notice, and the good ones leave.
Before anyone is contacted, confirm:
- The approved budget, including the top of the pay range
- Who the role reports to, and who signs off on the hire
- What success looks like at 6 and 12 months
- Whether the role is on site, hybrid or remote, stated plainly
That last point matters more than it used to. A buyer or planner who cannot tell from the posting where they will work will assume the answer is one they do not like.
Write the role wide enough to matter
Strong procurement and supply chain people want to affect cost, service and risk, not just process purchase orders. If the posting reads like a task list, you will attract people who want a task list. Say which departments the person will work with, which decisions they will influence and which problems are waiting for them.
Screen for the work, not the label
Three habits shrink the pool without improving the hire.
Demanding the identical prior job. A buyer from a distributor may have managed more supplier spend than a buyer from a manufacturer. Ask about commercial judgment, how they handled a supplier failure, how they learn a new category. Those answers predict more than a matching job history.
Reading titles as rank. One company's "coordinator" runs contracts and negotiates. Another company's "manager" supervises no one. Ask what they owned, what they spent, who they answered to and what changed because of them.
Discounting people with experience from outside North America. Many internationally trained logistics, sourcing and planning professionals have run complex networks for large global firms. Canada and the US both depend on immigration for labour force growth, and ignoring this group means ignoring a real share of qualified people. Assess the work they did. If local market knowledge matters, such as customs, carriers or regional suppliers, test for it directly instead of assuming it is missing.
Run a process a busy candidate will finish
Good candidates in these fields rarely sit idle. They are often talking to two or three employers at once, and the one that moves with purpose usually wins.
The usual causes of drift are easy to spot:
- 4 or 5 interview rounds where 2 or 3 would do
- Panels that cannot find a common hour for two weeks
- Decision-makers who have not agreed on what they are looking for
- Silence between rounds
A workable structure looks like this:
| Stage | Purpose | Target gap |
|---|---|---|
| First conversation | Fit, motivation, pay range | Within a few days of applying |
| Working interview | Real problem, real data | Within a week |
| Final meeting | Team and decision-maker | Offer follows quickly |
Block the interviewers' calendars before the search opens. If a round does not answer a question the earlier ones left open, cut it.
Make an offer that matches the market
Pay is where many searches quietly die. If your range was set two years ago, or copied from the person who left, candidates will accept the interview and decline the offer, or withdraw after the first call.
Check your range against public sources before launch. In Canada, Job Bank publishes wage data by occupation and region. In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does the same through its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program. Then compare against what you are actually seeing from candidates in your city, since a buyer in Toronto or Chicago will cost more than one in a smaller market.
If you cannot reach the market rate, be honest about it and offer something real in exchange: a clearer path to promotion, flexibility, a bigger scope, a defined review date.
Treat the candidate experience as part of the offer
People judge how you will manage them by how you manage the search. Reply when you said you would. Tell them where they stand. Give a clear no quickly. The people you decline today may be the people you call next year, and they talk to others in a field where everyone seems to know everyone.
What to do next
Take your open role and test it against the four questions: is it approved, is it clearly defined, can you finish the process in about 3 weeks, and is the pay range current? If any answer is no, fix that before you contact a single candidate. A search that starts clean usually ends sooner.
If you are hiring in supply chain, procurement or wider operations and want a second view on the role or the market, a Traverse recruiter can help.