Last week, Cordie procurement apprentices were treated to another great ‘Employment Insights’ session when Beth Wallace presented an overview of her career journey to the top of the profession, and how she was able to broaden out beyond procurement into general business leadership.
Cordie’s Employment Insights sessions are held every 4-6 months for all of our procurement apprentices. Each session is built upon a relevant employment theme for procurement professionals and we invite along a senior procurement practitioner to give an insight to their personal career journey and the lessons they have learned along the way.
This week’s session was attended by 45 learners and the theme was: Continuous Growth, with the concept that we are all on our individual career journeys of professional and personal development. As a commercial discipline, the procurement profession provides an excellent platform to add value to employers and for individuals to develop and expand into other commercial areas, such as sales or relationship management.
Beth Wallace MCIPS has held a number of senior procurement positions in major organisation across both the public and private sectors, including Group Procurement Director at RSA plc, where she had responsibility for both indirect and claims direct supply chain expenditure across 33 countries. From there, she developed her own consulting career supporting major corporates, including Addenbrooke’s Hospital NHS, the UK’s Cabinet Office and Covea Insurance. More latterly, Beth has broadened her career through non-executive roles at The Wilberforce Trust (a charity supporting those with sight and hearing loss) and also as a member of the business school advisory board to the York St John University.
Beth gave an insight to her personal career path, which started in manufacturing in Glasgow and broadened across a series of industries to financial services. After achieving her MCIPS professional qualifications, Beth had a hunger for further learning and recognised a passion inside her for embracing relationships and interpersonal skills. It was then that Beth discovered Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and focused her spare time in studying and mastering these skills - after which she started up her own mentoring business working weekends to broaden her professional career. Beth was able to employ these “soft” skills to her procurement roles and this enabled her to broaden out from procurement as a single discipline and into sales, relationship management and general business management disciplines.
When asked what she considered to be the cornerstone of her career success, she replied:
“It is important to follow your passions. Recognise that CIPS qualifications provide us with a solid starting foundation in professional commercial development. This was the starting point for my career which then allowed me to branch off into a wide series of business ventures”
We are planning two more Employment Insights sessions over the next calendar year. These will be open to all procurement apprentices across the Level 3 and Level 4 programmes (and the new Level 6 programme when it starts). Following the excellent feedback from other sessions in 2023 and 2024, we will continue to invite guest speakers from other senior roles across procurement.
If you would like to find out more about our Employment Insights sessions, or any additional information about the Cordie procurement apprenticeship programmes, do please get in touch with us via the contact form at the bottom of this page. We look forward to hearing from you!