Kaye/Bassman’s Corey Matthews Featured in Article “Experts Say the Future Looks Bright for Supply Chain Students”

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Kaye/Bassman’s Corey Matthews Featured in Article “Experts Say the Future Looks Bright for Supply Chain Students”

Dallas, Texas – 9/19/2013:

By Beth Goodbaum, Thomasnet Industry Market Trends

“If you ask a CEO what one of the most important strategic business units are, I’m quite confident supply chain would rank very highly these days, compared to 10 or 15 years ago,” said Rodney Apple, president of the SCM Talent Group. Apple’s executive search firm places supply chain professionals in end-to-end fields, from purchasing and sourcing raw materials from suppliers, all the way through manufacturing components.

Apple said he has not seen the demand for workers slow down during his 13 years in the field, even during the heart of the recession. He added that the discipline is finally getting the recognition that it deserves after years of damaging misconceptions.

“A lot of people in the past have looked at supply chain as a kind of a blue collar field,” he said. “They didn’t even know what supply chain really means and [educators] haven’t been teaching it to the lower grades, so people are drawn to the ‘sexier’ areas like the ‘Facebooks’ and the ‘Googles,’ instead of supply chain management fields.”

Apple and other industry leaders say that the reputation of the industry is improving due to the uptick in colleges and universities that offer innovative undergraduate and graduate programs supply chain studies.

The University of Washington, for instance, offers a new online Master of Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics (SCTL) program that incorporates engineering and business courses that examine transportation’s critical role in the supply chain. The online program features real-time communication between students and instructors.

Such programs help erase misconceptions held even by new college students planning to enter the fields.

Ingrid Lecot, a freshman at Baylor University, is one of the 30 ThomasNet.com scholarship winners and one of the six award recipients going into a supply chain field. She emphasizes that businesses need effective supply chain management to be able to compete at the local, national, and global levels.

“I think that many people do not understand how important supply chain is [in relation] to the world,” she said.

Supply chain experts agree.

“We have an initiative to try to drive supply chain management in the lower levels in education, because the discipline is not typically announced or understood in high school,” said Rick Blasgen, President and CEO of The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).

“It’s a discipline that is global, so if you’re interested in international assignment, those opportunities are really available for [the next generation] these days,” he said.

Blasgen, who started working in the food industry supply chain field more than 25 years ago, said starting opportunities are expanding for new college graduates.

“Third-party logistics providers are great recruiters for logistics and supply chain graduates, and you’ve got manufacturers who have supply chain departments,” Blasgen said, noting that larger companies such as Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Deloitte are growing their supply chain practices.

Students should hone specific skills early in their college career, industry experts say.

“Across the supply chain, [companies] are looking for strong analytical skills, mathematical skills, the tools for extracting, crunching and presenting data, facts and findings. They’re looking for that, combined with problem solving and being able to reason and take action with without fear,” said Corey Matthews, who leads the procurement and supply chain practice at Kaye/Bassman, a recruitment firm in Dallas.

Students also need “influencing skills,” said Matthews, who primarily works with Fortune 500 companies. “I define influencing as the ability to use analytical and interpersonal skills to develop and present a business case for doing something differently — and better.”

Read the full story.

 

About Kaye/Bassman

Founded in 1981, Kaye/Bassman has grown to become the largest single-site executive search and recruitment firm in the United States with the simple mission of impacting companies and enhancing careers by providing the finest in professional, executive, technical and scientific search. Kaye/Bassman provides strategic recruiting and executive search solutions in over 20 industry practice areas including construction recruiting, healthcare recruiting, banking executive search, energy recruitment and many more. Next Level Recruiting Training, a recruiting training organization, Next Level Exchange, a recruiting training best practices information exchange, and Next Level Marketing Communications are also Kaye/Bassman companies.

For additional information or a sample copy, contact:
Darren McDougal
Kaye/Bassman International
(972) 931.5242
(972) 931.9683
communications@kbic.com

Source: http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/2013/09/17/experts-say-the-future-looks-bright-for-supply-chain-students/