"Supply chain" on a job advert hides two different jobs. One person spends the week with suppliers, contracts and price; the other spends it with forecasts, stock and trucks. A CV that tries to speak for both usually convinces neither reader, and the fix is less about wording than about choosing which numbers go on the page.
Two families, and why one CV rarely serves both
The first family is procurement and buying: buyers, category managers, sourcing leads, procurement managers. Their work is commercial. They decide who the company buys from, on what terms and at what cost, and they are judged on what the company pays and what risk it carries.
The second is supply chain, planning and logistics: demand and supply planners, inventory controllers, logistics and warehouse managers, transport coordinators. Their work is about flow. They are judged on whether the product is in the right place at the right time without burying the business in stock.
The two sit in the same department in many companies, and plenty of people have done both. Still, the hiring managers read differently. A head of procurement scans for savings, spend and a certain type of supplier. A supply chain director scans for service level, inventory and lead time. Put both sets of figures at equal volume and each reader has to dig for their half.
So pick. If you are applying to a buying role, your planning experience becomes context: one or two lines showing you understand what happens after the purchase order. If you are applying to a planning role, the supplier negotiations shrink the same way. People with real mixed careers should keep two versions of the CV rather than one compromise. General operations management is a third thing again, and we cover that CV in a separate article.
Procurement: savings, spend and the supplier base
Four things carry a procurement CV.
- Spend under management. The yearly value of what you buy, and in which categories. It tells the reader your scale faster than any job title.
- Savings delivered. The headline number, and the one most often stated badly.
- Supplier base. How many suppliers, in which regions, and what you did to the list: consolidated it, dual-sourced a risky part, onboarded a new region.
- Contracts and negotiation. Framework agreements, tenders run, payment terms, the length and value of the deals you led.
Savings need a baseline or they mean nothing. "Saved 12 percent" against what? Last year's price, the first quote, the budget, a price index? Each gives a different figure for the same negotiation, and an experienced reader knows it. Say which one you used. It also helps to separate a real price reduction from cost avoidance, where you held off an increase the supplier asked for. Both are legitimate work. Blending them into one number is what makes a reader suspicious.
Then there is confidentiality. Many buyers cannot publish exact spend, and nobody expects them to. A range does the job: "category spend in the range of 20 to 30 million a year" places you without exposing your employer. The same goes for supplier names. "A tier-one packaging supplier" is enough.
One more thing: name your categories. Direct materials and indirect services are close to being different professions, and a buyer of machined parts is not automatically a fit for an IT and professional services role. Put the category in the first third of the page.
Planning and logistics: service, stock and time
For this family the reader wants results on flow, and a small set of measures covers most roles.
- Service level. On-time delivery, fill rate, or on time and in full, whichever your company tracked. Name the measure, because they are not interchangeable.
- Inventory. Stock value, days of cover, turns, obsolete stock written down or avoided.
- Lead time. From order to delivery, or from supplier to warehouse, and what you did to shorten it.
- Forecast accuracy. For planners, with the level it was measured at (product family or single item changes the figure a lot).
- Transport and warehouse cost. Cost per pallet, per order or per kilometre, and what moved it.
These figures pull against each other, and that is the interesting part. Anyone can raise service by holding more stock. A line that shows service going up while inventory went down tells the reader you understand the trade, and it is worth more than either number alone.
Scope matters as much as results. How many sites, how many product references, which regions, how many people or carriers. A planner for one plant and a planner for a twelve-country network share a title and little else. Roles on the road itself, such as driving, follow different rules and have their own CV guide.
Before and after: what the lines look like
The figures below are invented to show the shape of a line. Use your own, and only ones you could explain in an interview.
Procurement, before: Responsible for negotiating with suppliers and reducing costs.
Procurement, after: Managed packaging spend of roughly 15 to 20 million a year across about 40 suppliers. Ran a tender that cut unit prices by around 8 percent against the prior-year contract and moved payment terms from 30 to 60 days.
Planning, before: In charge of stock management and planning for the warehouse.
Planning, after: Planned supply for some 1,200 references across two distribution centres. Raised on-time-in-full delivery from around 91 to 96 percent over twelve months while reducing stock cover from 45 to 38 days.
Logistics, before: Managed transport and carriers.
Logistics, after: Ran outbound transport with six carriers for about 300 shipments a week. Re-tendered the regional lanes and brought cost per pallet down by around 10 percent against the previous contract rates.
The "after" versions are longer, and that is fine. Each one answers three questions: how big, what changed, compared with what. If you want the general method for turning duties into measured results, our article on quantifying achievements goes through it step by step.
Systems, methods and certifications
Tools belong on the CV, but as evidence and not as a wall of logos. Name the type of system and the product you used: an ERP for purchasing or materials management, a planning tool, a warehouse or transport management system. Then say what you did in it. "Daily user" and "led the rollout to three sites" are very different claims.
Methods work the same way. Category management, should-cost analysis and supplier scorecards on the buying side; S and OP (sales and operations planning), safety stock rules and lean warehouse methods on the flow side. For anyone who touches international shipments, a working knowledge of incoterms is worth a line, since it shows you know who pays and who carries the risk on each leg.
Certifications help most when you are changing sector or moving up. Well-known examples include the CIPS qualifications in procurement and the CPIM or CSCP credentials in planning and supply chain, but recognition varies by country and employer, so check which ones appear in the adverts you are answering before investing in one. How to format them on the page is covered in our certifications guide.
A summary that names your family
The top of the CV has one job here: tell the reader which family you belong to and what you own. Two or three sentences are enough.
A buyer might write: "Category buyer for packaging and indirect services, with spend in the range of 20 to 30 million a year across Europe. Background in tenders, framework contracts and supplier consolidation." A planner might write: "Supply planner for chilled food distribution, covering two warehouses and around 1,500 references. Focus on service level and stock reduction."
Neither opens with "supply chain professional", because that phrase is the exact ambiguity you are trying to remove. If your LinkedIn profile is the fuller record of your career, a tool such as Postulit can turn it into a first draft of the CV, and your job is then to cut it down to one family.
Choose the family, state the scale, and give every result its baseline.
Before you send the next application, take your five strongest lines and check each one for three things: a size, a change and a comparison point. Rewrite the ones that are missing any of them, and move everything that belongs to the other family further down the page.