Developing a fit for purpose Agency ‘PSL’

Your ‘Preferred Supplier List’ strategy may work well for the volume recruitment areas of any business, but can it really work with ‘hard to fill’ procurement & supply chain roles, when you need specialists or managers with best practice expertise, stakeholder management and commercial negotiation skills?

A ‘Preferred Supplier List’ strategy works well for the volume recruitment areas of any business, but can it really work with those ‘hard to fill’ procurement & supply chain roles, when you need specialists, or managers with the right mix of best practice expertise, stakeholder management and commercial negotiation skills? Unfortunately these skills are not easy to spot on CV’s and the PSL process forces agencies to access candidates quickly without the opportunity of really qualifying the individual candidate personality, capability and potential.

Then look at the ‘PSL’. In the last 3 recessionary years, the recruitment sector has faced extremely interesting times, major players in the market have had to ‘cut their cloth’ to suit, reducing investment, slimming down the workforce, cutting training budgets, re-organising and streamlining working processes. The end result, is a lot of recruiters appear to be the same as each other, good at delivering quick access to the same CV’s, but not delivering the quality people you need. A lot of employers have also found that after a period of inactivity, their PSL suppliers have not really been tested and have changed out of all recognition.

On a positive note recessions have a knack of fostering innovation, forcing some recruiters to think differently reinventing their services, creating strategies that build a new relationship with their clients, resulting in different ways to engage with candidates and employers.

Just when you think it’s not worth re-assessing the ‘PSL’ as it hasn’t really been used anyway in the last 3 years, think again. Your PSL agencies may have changed and the market has changed out of all recognition, in your favour.
It’s probably time you take another look. 

If you would like to find out about the latest developments in procurement talent pipelines, or how to reduce lead times to recruit and improve the quality of the people you hire, call or email: 

Tony Goldsby of Procurement People on (UK) +44 (0)121 450 5024
or email: tony.goldsby@procurement-people.com