More organizations are elevating procurement into executive positions, and as recruiters specialized in the field, we speak to procurement leaders every day. Here are our top tips for how to build your procurement career into a director level role—and beyond.

A few weeks ago, we published a post outlining our top tips for becoming a supply chain executive. As recruiters who have worked exclusively in this area for many years, we speak with supply chain executives every day, as well as those who hire them. We work with many supply chain leaders as they build our careers, so, while we’re not the ultimate authority on what it takes to get to the top of the industry, we know a thing or two.

We were thrilled by the response: as we shared the article, numerous supply chain professionals came out on LinkedIn saying that they found the advice we offered useful. So as a follow up to that post, today we want to offer a similar post outlining our tips for Procurement, which is our other major area of recruiting focus at Argentus.

So let’s dig in: what does it take to become a Procurement executive?

First of all, some of our advice is similar to the advice we offered for supply chain leaders. But procurement is its own beast. We suggest you start by reading our post about supply chain leadership, as our points about mentorship and personal branding there apply here as well. 

With that said, here are our biggest tips for how to take your Procurement career to the board room:

Think about industry as your North Star:

In some organizations and industries, procurement is seen as part of the broader supply chain function (alongside other functions like logistics, distribution, warehousing, demand & supply planning). This most often happens in manufacturing and other industries that ship a physical product to customers. In service industries, such as financial services, insurance, and the legal profession, there may not even be a supply chain function per se. In those companies, procurement manages the entire process of acquiring what the company needs to operate, everything from strategic IT infrastructure to physical facilities, marketing, travel, etc. 

So the industry where you build your procurement career is critical. It dictates where you slot into the larger organization, and dictates where you build your competencies.

Do you picture yourself as a Head of Procurement at a manufacturing company, leading purchasing for new capital projects and strategically expanding supplier bases for raw materials? Or do you picture yourself as a Chief Procurement Officer for a major financial or public sector organization, negotiating new strategic IT and real estate contracts as part of a category management model? The sooner you can plan your industry journey, the better equipped you are.

Broaden your category expertise:

Building off the point above, the categories you work in—in other words, what you purchase—matters quite a bit. Core procurement skills (running RFX events, negotiating with suppliers, drafting contracts, engaging with stakeholders to solve their challenges) are transferable no matter what you purchase, but companies want to see that you have a good understanding of the supplier marketplace in the category that you’ll be buying in. For example, if you’ve spent your procurement career buying IT software, companies would be hesitant to offer you a role managing procurement of raw material commodities for manufacturing.

No matter the industry, Chief Procurement Officers are charged with all of an organization’s purchasing. So, understandably, Procurement leaders need a wide variety of category expertise. If you want to rise to the top, it pays to broaden your category expertise. If you’re in a sole contributor or manager role, work to find opportunities to gain exposure to new categories and new supplier bases. Some organizations will even “rotate” their procurement teams through categories to help give them broad category experience.  

Spend value matters:

Annual spend is tremendously important to a procurement career. The more senior the role, the more spend a procurement leader is managing. For leadership opportunities, companies want to see that you’ve shepherded large-scale, high-value and complex projects. 

For example: say two procurement professionals apply for the same Director-level job, and one has managed $20M in annual spend, but the other has managed $500M in annual spend. The company will typically go with the latter candidate. So as you build your procurement career, it pays to learn how to manage large contracts and large procurement projects. People who have delivered large capital projects (for example plant, facilities, or engineering projects) are highly prized in certain industries. But no matter what industry you’re in, the larger your spend value, the more lucrative the opportunities are. 

Demonstrate your value with cost savings, but not just cost savings:

As we wrote about recently, cost savings will always be a critical metric of procurement success, but it’s only one of the ways that procurement adds value today. So as you build your procurement career—and consider executive roles—you should of course aim to provide cost savings through your procurement projects. But you should also work to add value in other ways. For example:

• Reduced total cost of ownership;
• Broadening supplier bases and improving supplier performance through contract management;
• Product or service innovation—for example, partnering with suppliers to launch new products or categories;
• Providing value in terms of ESG and sustainability by sourcing products from ethical, transparent suppliers, and by identifying opportunities to lower the carbon footprint of the overall supply chain

In general, delivering strong cost savings will get you far in procurement. But if you can deliver these other strategic benefits, you’ll go even farther. When choosing career opportunities, aim for roles that give you opportunities for these kinds of strategic projects.

Invest in diverse, strategic skill sets:

Procurement is all about buying what an organization needs at the lowest cost, with the highest quality, and the best delivery timeline. But procurement leaders don’t only buy—they also manage the people, processes and systems that allow the organization to meet those goals in a more strategic way. If you want to make it to the top, identify opportunities that will let you improve those key aspects. For example, consider joining an organisation implementing a category management model to participate in a business transformation. Offer to take the lead on procurement systems implementations (for example P2P software), so you can see how improved systems can improve procurement processes. And always seek the roles with the most strategic potential, where you’re not just filling a seat, but providing value in the ways we’ve outlined and more. 

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As we said in our article about How to Become a Supply Chain Executive, there’s enough advice about rising into executive leadership to fill several books. But hopefully this article gives some good procurement-specific advice about what companies are looking for in leaders today. 

And as always, if you’re a procurement executive looking to move into your next role—or an organization looking to hire your next great procurement or supply chain leader—let Argentus help you. Send an email with your requirements to recruit@argentus.com today!