Supply Chain Spark Blog

Welcome to The Supply Times , a twice-monthly newsletter with the latest news, insights, and trends on all things supply management, executive search, and career-related.   https://thesupplytimes.substack.com/     In the latest newsletter : Can startups save the supply chain? The flexibility—and faults—of freelancing

Why do so many companies get job ads wrong? A glance at any recruitment platform will reveal dozens of poorly constructed posts full of buzzwords, cliches, vague promises, and just plain dull copy. Job ads matter because they’re the very first touchpoint in the recruitment journey. It’s an opportunity to capture the interest of high-quality talent and motivate them to take action. Writers of job ads are typically under...

Fortunately, the silver lining remains when it comes to employment and hiring with the unofficial end of summer upon us. Last week we received more positive news from the ISM August PMI manufacturing index . The index continues to rise faster for the third straight month. Most promising in these numbers is that demand has improved dramatically from July to August. That includes new orders, new export orders, and customer inventories all...

“Many global supply chains are not equipped to cope with the world we are entering. Most were engineered, some brilliantly, to manage stable, high-volume production by capitalizing on labor-arbitrage opportunities available in China and other low-cost countries.” Word of wisdom…written almost 10 years ago by McKinsey & Company . It’s no longer a secret about how fragile our global supply chains are, when it...

In the couple of weeks since we launched Supply Chain Spark and Procurement Spark , the support and encouragement from the supply chain community have been encouraging. Since interest in all things supply chain remains high, it’s definitely carrying over to demand for new job opportunities. The growth in the manufacturing sector as witnessed by ISM’s PMI numbers for July certainly helped boost hiring sentiment too. The...

We've all had bad bosses. I worked hard at that supply chain job. Arrived earlier than the team, questioned everything, followed my curiosity wherever there was an opportunity to get involved. I loved the job, the people, the work. And I did my job well. One day I finished a project and decided to leave earlier than the team. I was triumphantly exhausted, and it was a good time to take a breath. The next morning my boss called...