What Candidates Really Want In 2020: Survey Results & More

A sneak peek of 2020 recruitment trends and what 450+ end-to-end supply chain candidates surveyed really value in an employer. Because the war for talent is only intensifying... 2019 has been a year of challenging uncertainty mixed with exciting changes for many businesses in Procurement and Supply Chain. From the political circus of Brexit, to technological disruption and IR35 looming ahead, recruitment strategies are changing. Yet recruitment levels aren’t. In fact, the CIPD’s Autumn 2019 Labour Market Outlook shows that employers are taking a “business as usual” approach to recruitment and 43% said it had been more difficult to fill vacancies in the past 12 months. So with the war for talent not dying out, we decided to survey over 450 Procurement, Supply Chain and Logistics professionals candidates to find out what they really value from an employer and what would make them look elsewhere. (Along with their views on Brexit and AI.) We’ll be releasing this as part of our Salary and Benefits Guide 2020 in January. You can register here to be the first to receive it, but for now, we take a sneak peek at the survey results and the recruitment trends for the year ahead...

Survey results sneak peek: what candidates value in an employer

We interviewed over 400 candidates across the end-to-end supply chain in the following functions: Supply Chain, Procurement & Purchasing, Buying & Merchandising and Logistics, Transportation and Warehousing. We’ll be releasing the results early in the New Year but here are a few of our favourite/surprising results:

Current role: the most and least satisfying areas

• Work environment: a Top 3 choice for all functions except Supply Chain
• Work-life balance: a Top 3 choice for all functions except Logistics, Transport & Warehousing
• Career progression and performance recognition: this made every function’s Bottom 3
• Training & development: three functions found this to be a Bottom 3 for satisfaction

Reasons to look for a new role

• Salary, a new challenge and feeling undervalued: all came in the Top 3 for Supply Chain, Procurement & Purchasing and Logistics, Transport & Warehousing
• Salary: the only Top 3 reason shared by Buying & Merchandising
• Change of industry, the culture/ethos and benefits: these made every function’s Bottom 3

What is most valued when looking for a new role

• A new challenge and salary: this made all functions’ Top 3
• Bonus: It appears no function valued this highly.
• Flexible working and benefits: these also featured highly in the Bottom 3

The top and least rated benefits

The jury is out on this everything but annual leave, was the most common selected first-choice for all functions.

Click the image below to download your copy of the Salary & Benefits Guide in 2020.