Our Blog

If you’re experiencing high turnover rates at your supply chain company or in your supply chain department, it may not be your company that’s the problem. It may not be the employees, either.

Then what is the issue? There’s a good possibility that you’re just not hiring the right people—because there’s a science to matching the right people to the right jobs, and few people are truly trained in how to do it.

Usually, the process goes like this:

• Candidates are screened on a basic level, and the pool is pared down. The most viable candidates advance to the interview stage.

• Most interview panels are made up of employees who are untrained in proper hiring procedures and lack the knowledge and leadership needed to make smart hiring decisions.

• During the interview, each panelist is given the opportunity to ask questions; however, the questions are usually redundant, do not sell the company/position to the candidate and vice versa.

All of these factors make it difficult to identify the most capable (and best fit) job candidate for the position.

Interviewers need to know how to talk to candidates about their backgrounds, and need to understand their depth and experience as it relates to the job. They also need to assess each one to see if their personality is a good fit. They should find out why the interviewees want to leave their current jobs. In summary, they need to know what kind of person the candidate is, personally and professionally, to figure out if they’ll be a good match for the company and the team they’ll be working on. Do the interviewers at your company have the deep knowledge of supply chain and the functions of each role in the company?

If not, these poorly planned and executed interviews create a cycle, where you end up having untrained interviewers hiring the next set of decision makers, which perpetuates the problem. So what’s the solution?

One way to avoid high turnover is to work with supply chain hiring specialists, who can help you define a set hiring process and source the best consultants.

Using their expertise and knowledge of the field, they can help you prepare for interviews by first defining interviewee roles and what will need to be covered.

Finally, they can help train your staff who will interview so they know what to look for in the final stages of interviewing.

ZDA Supply Chain Recruiting has worked with hundreds of companies to help them plan their processes and train their interviewers. To find out how you can make our expertise work for you, call or contact us anytime!