#oneaday, Day 129: Projects Procurement Specialist Wanted

Have you tried to get a job recently? It’s a massive, huge pain in the arse, and nothing to do with crowbars this time. The reason for it being such a pain in the arse is the sheer amount of bullshit that flies around with job advertisements, as I believe I alluded to in passing yesterday.

The worst bullshit is when you read through a job advertisement and, by the end of it, have no idea what you would actually be doing if you were successful in your application. What on Earth is a “Manager of Quality and Services”? Or a “Projects Procurement Specialist”? Or that old favourite, “Consultant”? Consultant on what? What are you consulted on? “Nothing, I’m just a consultant”.

Then there’s the job description itself. From the aforementioned “Projects Procurement Specialist” ad:

To provide the engineering department with tactical/strategic procurement support, including supplier identification and selection to meet the Engineering projects cost schedule, quality and delivery requirements.

To act as the liaison between the engineering and purchasing department whilst identifying opportunities to protect the business and to increase gross margins.

To raise and process relevant documentation for supplier selection criteria both technical and commercial and draft and negotiate contracts and purchase orders.

To contribute to continual improvement of processes and relationships at key suppliers and those internal processes affecting supply chain performance.

Now, granted, I am not a Projects Procurement Specialist. I’m not even a Projects Procurement Trainee. But I did do an English degree and can write a bit. And I have no idea what any of those sentences mean. Let’s see if we can break them down a bit, shall we?

To provide the engineering department (Okay! Easy so far. I can do this.) with tactical/strategic (Oh, so it’s a military job?) procurement support (Procurement of what?) including supplier identification (So… looking people up in the phone book who can send you things?) and selection (…and putting a circle around them) to meet the Engineering projects cost schedule (Cost is an amount of money. It doesn’t keep a schedule.), quality (How does cost have a quality?) and delivery requirements (I imagine they want it put in a box and sent to them. Us. Wait, who’s getting what delivered now?)

Whew. So some military person is required to get hold of some unspecified products that the Engineering department need, having worked out who can send them to them and for how much? SO WHY DON’T YOU SAY THAT? Let’s continue.

To act as the liaison between the engineering and purchasing department (Wait… I thought I was the one “procuring” things?) whilst identifying opportunities to protect the business (Well, you could replace the lock on that door for a start… and you should probably put an alarm on the fridge.) and to increase gross margins (Have you seen those margins recently? They’re disgusting, but I think we can do worse. Smear some shit over them or something.)

Okay. I’m getting lost now. Let’s carry on…

To raise and process relevant documentation (“Raise and process”? Do you mean “type”? Or “print”? Or perhaps “type then print”?) for supplier selection criteria (Relevant documentation for supplier selection criteria… um… like a checklist or something?) both technical and commercial and draft and negotiate contracts and purchase orders (There are so many “ands” in that sentence I can’t even begin to fathom what it actually means. Something to do with contracts and purchase orders. Still no word of what any of these things are actually for.)

I don’t think attempting to analyse this is actually making it any clearer to me. In for a penny, in for a pound.

To contribute to continual improvement of processes and relationships at key suppliers (What? You mean “get to know someone”? Or perhaps “set up an account with someone who sends us stuff”?) and those internal processes affecting supply chain performance (Reading this is giving my internal processes a funny bubbly feeling. I think I might need to go and sit on the toilet for a little while. Excuse me.)

So, having come to the end of those statements, I am still completely in the dark as to what a Projects Procurement Specialist actually does. Evidently their specialism is so specialist that anyone who has never procured a project will have absolutely no idea what they are supposed to be doing.

And herein lies my problem. When I look for a job, I tend to try and look for something that I know I can do. But when you’re confronted with page after page of bullshit like the above that makes absolutely no sense, it’s difficult to work out exactly what jobs you can do. Or indeed would want to do. Being a Projects Procurement Specialist sounds inordinately tedious to me, so I guess I won’t be joining that particular team.

But what can I do? If I don’t understand half of the job advertisements out there – and it’s not through stupidity, I might add, it’s through their extremely poor use of language – how can I be expected to find something I’ll be good at? I feel trapped in a cycle of doing crappy supply teaching right now, because for all the bullshit there is in education, at least I understand what the words “classroom teacher” mean. They haven’t quite taken to calling them “learning facilitators” yet, though I imagine it’s only a matter of time.