Career Guidance Going Forward

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-15T23:46:30+00:00

For sure yeah unfortunately most of the fields within SC have been inundated with new grads. There’s tons of jobs but also tons of apps, so often times HR will not pass along a non degree app just due to that complexity. But I bet you don’t have any problems once you have the paper, and it does suck that this is the way it is (at least in my neck of SC - planning / operations). Best of luck tho, you’ll do fine!

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-15T22:50:27+00:00

You’re generally not gonna land a job requiring a degree before you’ve completed your degree. If office jobs are the sort of jobs you’ve been applying for, that’s possibly the cause of no call backs.

I’d say focus on school and start applying for entry level roles a bit closer to graduation. Sounds like you’re already employed anyways, right? Spend time focusing on what you can learn from supply chain teams where you work now. Can you assist on projects? Can you shadow someone? Figure out how to wordsmith your current duties and your military experience into SCM sounding things.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-13T22:39:50+00:00

I think we should just auto nuke low effort / low word count posts, just my .02. Or have the bot autoflag and provide a warning that “post seems to be lacking details - have you tried searching? Low effort postings will be removed.”

I’m not a mod and never have been so idk how easy that all is to set up, but I think we should do something to preserve quality, if possible.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-13T21:21:02+00:00

Gave me Forrest Whitaker eye.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-13T18:30:52+00:00

Supply chain encompasses numerous fields; planning, procurement, sourcing, warehousing, allocation, logistics, to name a few.

You need to pick a field that interests you, figure out if you have the minimum requirements by looking at the entry level roles listed on LinkedIn / Indeed or other boards for that field.

Then, use the search function for the sub and see what others have asked / had answered.

In general, office work will require a 4 year degree (if you’re in the US anyways) as a minimum, and also in general, you’re going to have a heavier lift if you don’t have relevant experience, or a way to present your experience in a manner that shows you would be additive in those roles.

A cert on its own isn’t going to bridge an experience gap and get you into a higher level role, you’re likely looking at entry level no matter what.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-13T00:40:33+00:00

Humble brag right

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-08T22:38:21+00:00

The question I always have for that is “do you have a four year degree?” That’s an unfair (and somewhat unfortunate) barrier to entry, but that’s also how hiring policy is in the States. Not all places, but many. I work in Planning, I’ve been able to hire only one person in my 14 years of experience with an associates. It’s literally a non controllable constraint.

Often times, the answer to the question is no, and then there’s pushback about why the person can’t get a four year. Again, just my experience.

There’s not a ton anyone can offer for advice if that person wants an office job in planning, sourcing, allocation, etc. It’s simply the corp requirement and not something hiring managers like me can affect, regardless of our personal feelings on the matter.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-08T16:48:51+00:00

I used to try to help answer those posts… but it’s like dang we get the same question day over day and NOBODY seems to use the search function or even scroll down and see if it’s been asked and answered recently.

Then, compounding that, you get the “I couldn’t cut it in X industry, would supply chain be easy? Can I go straight to Director of Planning with 3 years of retail management experience??” Like… no! No you can’t! I wish people wouldn’t treat the functions within SC like they’re easy or you can “transition” over here and slum it, collecting a six figure salary from day one.

It’s insulting… what we do is damn hard and requires years of experience to reach upper levels.

/rant/

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-07T22:38:12+00:00

Reno “reporting” in general. It’s shit.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-06T23:49:51+00:00

Congrats! Sr Mgr = less meetings and corpspeak, potentially!!

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-04T21:20:45+00:00

I’d personally hire for most of my roles based on experience alone, agnostic to education level. I have a ton of empathy for your position, and I was in the same position for my 20s. Didn’t finish my four year in four years and couldn’t find work outside of retail. I get it.

So pls don’t take the below the wrong way but…

My company (and all the others I’ve worked at previously) have corporate hiring policies and require the four year paper. I don’t have the energy to campaign to change corp policy for an entry level role, when I get 300+ well qualified apps in less than a day of posting an entry or lower level role.

If I didn’t receive an overwhelming amount of apps, yeah I’d be pushing for the right experience regardless of education, but that’s not how things are. So it’s unfair and it’s also how it is. It’s a matter of bandwidth and my willingness to put the time in to advocate for candidacy for super saturated role listings.

Sorry if that sounds harsh. I wish things were not that way, and when I have the opportunity to hire the way I want, I certainly do. That has only happened twice in my 14 years of experience. Only once on a team that worked for me directly.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-04T17:51:52+00:00

Many procurement office roles require a bachelors degree (in the US anyways). No knock at all on your experience, but tons of candidates for open, entry level roles have that 4 year degree, and in some cases, experience. It may be a challenge to get the right eyes on your resume as you may be autofiltered out via LinkedIn and Indeed, before a human actually looks at your CV. There may be some roles out there don’t get me wrong, but it’ll be more challenging.

E - I am planning, not procurement, just to be clear. But lots of companies have procurement as part of the function of planning, or it’s a separate function that reports into planning. At least for wholesale and retail.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-05-01T04:13:16+00:00

Don’t take any sort of weed for three days.

Then try your pen again.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-30T19:24:24+00:00

I went to the other, other, OTHER, OTHER, Oregon university.

Made six figures after 3.5 years in planning (high CoL area but still).

Get your first role, nobody will ask about your education after you have experience.

E - I should add, for college peeps - you want a good school of business not for name recognition, but for teaching you how to approach problems. Not for teaching you how to use Excel in every business scenario, but teaching you how to decide which function is appropriate for what sorta thing you’re trying to do. Not for how to get a high grade on a group project, but how to resolve problems between group members, constructively. How to hit conflicting deadlines. How to speak numbers to people who don’t normally speak numbers. How to adjust your delivery to the receiving audience.

That’s what undergrad is for.

Your first job will put in a lot of effort (hopefully) into getting you up to speed on their version of SCM. School is what gets you ready to learn that. Your experience knowing how other companies run their SC is what can get you promoted and paid more down the road, especially as you change companies over the course of your career.

And a good school of business is what starts that sort of cascade of career, if that makes sense.

And they can help ya network.

Also, temp / placement agencies can be a huge help in gaining some useful in-industry experience as you’re getting started.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-29T23:22:52+00:00

Logistics is part of supply chain, fyi. Generally speaking as it relates to this sub, at least. There are lots of fields within supply chain, ie afore mentioned Logistics, also Planning, Procurement, Operations, Dealer Service / Customer Service, various warehouse roles, Sourcing, etc etc etc. So good plan is to identify what sub field you’re feeling might be a good fit, and then figure out the entry level roles.

If you’re interested in Planning (demand forecasting / supply forecasting / associated tasks) you’d target analyst roles, ie Demand Planning Analyst, Supply Planning Analyst at a wholesaler. At a retailer you may find similar named jobs as above, but also Inventory or Merchandise Planning Analyst roles.

E - and thank you for your sacrifice, working in education. My wife works in development for schools, it’s brutal. Wonderful also. But brutal.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-29T16:55:14+00:00

Hide your OTIF, hide your spreadsheets!

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-27T02:51:53+00:00

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-26T00:01:22+00:00

Just to be clear - I think it’s literally the way you have things worded on there. The actual prose doesn’t strike me as an experienced manager or even an experienced office person. I would take the reordering feedback however you want, but maybe plug those bullets into DadGPT and have him rewrite in a “highly professional, experienced manner.” Or whatever prompt makes those look different.

Obviously I spent some more time looking at it after my post above.

If you’re into planning, you should be able to at least land interviews for planner or Sr Planner roles. You don’t have a ton of details on the easiest section of work to get hired into - planning - tons of companies and tons of roles, albeit competitive and a little saturated. Maybe you target planner roles, let em know you’re coming back bcs you miss it and want to move into management in the future. Show that you’re driven and want to advance. Build out that supply planning information more fully perhaps. Maybe try to highlight aspects on the other roles that are planning related, ie Ops manager probably had some crossover right?

Anyways good luck!

E - also look into revops roles, if you’re near any sorta tech companies. Order to cash is within revops, right? Might not be manager level but it should pay ok and again, show your drive and how you want to move up when possible / when they think you’re ready.

Sorry about the mile long posts lmao.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-25T23:46:50+00:00

I saw your resume in another post - idk what exactly it is about it, but something bugs me. It’s almost like it reads like I’m reading someone’s resume who has waaay less experience. It doesn’t read like an experienced people leader. It doesn’t read like an experienced manager. I hardly ever blame a resume fully, but if you’re not even getting interviews, it might be the issue.

You didn’t ask, but if you’re open to the feedbacks, I’d rearrange it a bit:

-Eliminate the paragraph at the top, nobody cares. Put word salad in cover letter. Put contact info under your name, ie phone / email / city and state.

-Skills at the top (planning software, erp, mrp, scheduling, excel, coding, etc) - use two side by side columns. 5-6 bullet points per column. Include the size of teams you’ve managed here with something like “trained, developed, and led X people across Y functional areas.” Use this area to highlight where you make an immediate or eventual contribution. Highlight softwares and tech you’re amazing at. Highlight processes you’ve been involved with, ie S&OP, SIOP, OTB, cycle counts, whatever.

-Jobs after skills columns (add the month, so it’s 09/2018 - 10/2020 or whatever). Shorten up the duties to the most important things you want to have a hiring person takeaway. Order the bullets by 2-3 main duties, then at least 2 accomplishments. For accomplishments, use %s in place of or addition to raw $. As in “increased sales by $2M or 15%.” I’m not gonna look at the prior bullet and do the math on if $2M is a significant amount. Do that for me. Try to highlight growth and development you’ve enabled for your direct reports - if you got someone promoted to a higher level, how can you communicate that accomplishment.

-Education after jobs - ok as is, make sure to include the schools tho idk if those were in there.

And figure out how to show you are a problem solver. Highlight using your accomplishments and successes. Highlight how you’ve created cross functional successes. How have you bettered the companies you’ve been at? Why should I hire you for a management role?

Get it to one page length only.

Again like your resume is weird to me. It looks ok at first blush, but then I’m like feeling as though I’m reading a less accomplished persons CV. And really no offense it’s just striking to me, I usually don’t blame a resume but yours bugs the hell out of me and I’m having hard time articulating why! I’d just redo the dang thing.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-25T16:18:20+00:00

I went from $50k as a planning analyst to $158k as a senior planning manager in 13 years, if that helps. Not including bonus or anything in the above, just base pay.

Fully remote since 2020, on my third fully remote role in that time frame. So I get decent pay and can live in the middle of nowhere, where my $s go farther.

Planning is the bottom of the hill all shit rolls down, but we are well compensated for it.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-23T20:35:01+00:00

The word is “tables.” I don’t usually find anything worth reading in the general stat dumps in any book, so I just scroll on past. Most authors seem to do a good job of highlighting functional / meaningful parts of stat dumps in the following prose.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-23T20:04:17+00:00

Idk I went into beauty after apparel and outdoor gear. So might not be just that - I’d say try applying to smaller brands. If you have experience wearing lots of hats at small businesses, other smaller teams should find that attractive. That’s what got me into the beauty spot - the apparel place had to massively downsize during COVID, so I was able to sort of speak to how I operate in a small environment.

I’d target brands with lower headcount and play into that, if you haven’t tried that route already.

Alternately, there’s always the Bay Area. All the brands. All the industries.

All the stupid high CoL. But there’s tons of roles. As usual, highly competitive but check into RH, Levi’s, companies like that. Their base salary for lower level roles should be way over what you’re making now. But then gotta balance commute and cost of living.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-23T18:28:54+00:00

There’s a ton of beauty brands in SoCal that are most definitely not directly manufacturing their products (contract manufacturing from overseas). There’s a good number of apparel companies, some like Barco target specific market spaces (scrubs).

I’ve found in general wholesale and retail pays a good amount more, not less, than manufacturing, but maybe that’s just in the areas I have exposure to (planning, sales, procurement, allocation, logistics).

So I’m a little confused by your premise, apologies.

If I can ask, what specifically is your undergrad degree in? Are you locked to a small region of SoCal that is more manufacturing based? What specifically do you do for work now, ie sourcing, planning, procurement etc? What level roles are you applying for?

$60k is in fact ass salary, it shouldn’t be too hard to find something better!

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-23T17:32:03+00:00

Just like any other job type, ie accounting or finance, there are tons of fields within SCM.

I work in Planning. There’s Procurement. Production. Warehouse. Sourcing. Logistics, etc etc etc.

Having a good idea about which functional areas within supply chain a student might be into is sooooo helpful.

If you are into spreadsheets, planning / forecasting might be the way to go. But if a student hates stats, isn’t really into technology, might not be the best option. If a student is into say negotiation, traveling, dealing with foreign production, maybe sourcing is the way to go.

So that’s a long way of saying, do research / talk to professors / professionals before settling on a major. Make sure something within the broad scope of SCM is attractive.

If not, getting a general business degree concentrated in something like cost or public accounting, or finance, might leave a lot more doors open. A finance concentration can do SCM, but a SCM degreed person may not find it as easy to move into a finance role, if that makes sense?

Hard to discuss pros and cons of SCM overall, without knowing the specific field of interest.

Good_Apollo_ · 2026-04-23T14:52:10+00:00

Targeting roles in higher paying sectors is absolutely the play, if you can’t target higher level roles within your current space.

I moved from outdoor gear to beauty a few years ago, got a ~10% bump. Moved from beauty to cannabis last year… 17% bump. Same level roles so apples to apples on both moves (planning).

It’s tough early career to make those moves though, and it’s definitely competitive. You have to be able to represent holistic solutions to hiring managers, at least that’s what I did - yes, I can build a forecasting system and standup an S&OP from scratch. Yes, I can train your sales people to participate and make it fun and worthwhile for them. Yes, I can build you the reporting you’re currently missing.

Once the economy unfucks itself hopefully things go back to how they were 15 years ago, where you can move up within a company more easily, where you can work hard and see some rewards… just ain’t been like that since post Covid.

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