By Allison Searcy, Administrative Assistant/Sales Support/Purchasing
Sometimes the role you originally fill for a company changes and evolves over time. It can be a good thing but one that often requires a little extra training and continuing education.
This is what happened to me when I stepped into the role of purchasing a few years ago. I was excited for the challenge, but it was totally new to me since most of my work at Induron prior to this was in administrative assistance and sales support. I initially received about three days of training, and then I was thrust into the middle of purchasing duties.
Over the next couple of years, I wasn’t able to do much official training, but I was so busy learning all the ins and outs of purchasing through “on the job” training. While those years of learning and figuring things out on my own were invaluable, I was thankful to have the opportunity last year to take more formal continuing education classes.
I started with Fundamentals of Purchasing, which starts at the beginning and takes you through the entire purchasingprocess. I also took an Applied Purchasing Techniques class that was about the differences between purchasing in a big corporation versus a smaller family-owned company, like Induron. In fact, I was the only person in the room who worked for a third generation, family-owned company. Everyone else was a purchasing agent for much larger companies. Your authority to be able to purchase the items is so different in a large corporation because of the chain of command. Here at a small company, you go straight to the boss’s door, which cuts out the red-tape.
For anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation of having new duties added to their job description or an entire new title, my advice is to find a continuing education class that meets your particular needs as specifically as possible. Exactly what you need may not always be available, but take time to do a little research, and take the initiative with your employer to ask for time to attend classes, conferences and meetings.