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President's Viewpoint
Logistic Careers on the Net
by Victor Deyglio
Introduction by Victor S. Deyglio, President, Canadian Professional Logistics Institute
On Friday, April 30, more than 100 members and guests met for the eighth annual meeting of the Canadian Professional Logistics Institute at Vaughan House, Estates of Sunnybrook, Toronto. The workshops, luncheon at which 158 new P.Log. professionals were recognized and the meeting contributed to a highly successful and fun-filled day.
On that day, the Logistics Institute officially introduced building plans for a Web-based Career Planning and Management System. I am pleased to introduce Mr. Chris Eacrett, who as Project Manager is leading these developments. As a guest columnist for Viewpoint, Chris paints a picture of things to come as we reinvent the future for logistics professionals in Canada.
For some time now the Logistics Institute has been aware of an emerging human resource crisis in logistics. On the one hand, how do companies recruit, hire and keep qualified logistics professionals with the skills and expertise to manage and lead the organization? On the other hand, how do logistics professionals plan and manage their careers in organizations and determine where they can apply their expertise, and develop the opportunity to grow and be appropriately recognized for their professional competence?
The Institute has partnered with Industry Canada to develop a career planning and management service specifically for logistics in Canada. As a Web site, this service will provide companies, as employers, and individuals as logistics professionals and practitioners, a forum to locate competencies and communicate.
The objectives of this career planning and management service are primarily to meet the Human Resource (HR) supply and demand needs of Canada’s logistics community. It will be more than just a job board: it will be a Planning & Management System.
Individuals will have the opportunity to create and maintain a career portfolio, observe industry employment trends, plan career paths, and respond to career opportunities – most importantly, in an environment that is secure and guards confidentiality.
Companies will have the opportunity to develop employment positions – beyond the usual “job description” posting to a full scale Skills, Knowledge Aptitute/Attitude (SKA) profiling, identifying skills, knowledge and aptitudes appropriate to the position.
In addition, partnership with Industry Canada and the Institute has ensured that this service is linked to the National Graduate Register (NGR). The NGR is a “web recruiter” for graduates of Canada’s universities and colleges and provides an integral link to new entries into logistics.
This service will underline the importance of professionalism. As part of its millennium project, the Institute has intentionally repositioned professional certification onto the career path model developed with community in-put in the Labor Market Information Study (LMI, 1997). This career path model also governs the design of this service.
A career in logistics moves from entry level, through tactical (functional) experiences, to structural responsibilities, and finally, to a strategic level. Rather than as traditional hierarchies, each stage along the path is described in terms of planning horizons and scope of decision responsibility.
Within this planning & management service, corporations and individuals will describe logistics positions and create personal career portfolios in the framework of the career path model (tactical, structural and strategic logistics working environments). This will include identifying skills, knowledge and aptitude in terms of scope of responsibilities (decision parameters), nature of work (planning and functional activities) and customer service horizons.
The career planning and management Web site is a service to match portfolios with career opportunities. Corporations will have an employer home page and individuals will have a personalized home page and from these home pages users will access all of the site’s features.
The main features will be the portfolio builder (for individuals) or the career posting builder (for corporations). Each of these builders will consist of a series of templates asking specific questions to identify logistics tactical, structural and strategic skills sets and enable users to create a career portfolio (individual) or plan an employment posting (corporations). Based on the information entered into the fields of the various templates, the site will automatically match portfolios and postings.
To ensure confidentiality is maintained at all times, both users, namely, individuals and corporations, have the ability to determine the kinds, degree, nature and scope of information available once a match occurs. A company or an individual can issue a request to reply and forward a full version of their portfolio or career posting and individuals can maintain and update portfolios on the system without ever being in “job search”; and companies can enter the site to undertake skills capacity analyses without ever posting a job.