My Journey to Supply Chain

Sal Prathi Mari
Published in Logistics Edited 5 months ago
3
Entering the right career path is a challenging period in every person's life, probably between 18-22 years of age, This article is a brief idea of how I have come up with this passion in my lifetime. I am a person born in a typical middle-class family, who completed my primary and secondary education by attending five schools in two different countries  (due to family conditions). I’m not a top-ranking student or weak student, I'm an average student sitting in the middle row. My exam marks were not enough to enter the campus and I didn't attend resitting because, I wasn’t interested in entering campus and felt it would be a boring lifestyle, maybe because of multiple school exchanges and adapting to the different environment, but I aimed to achieve a graduation in any category. So, I have planned to go for a job and do part-time studies.
My first job was as an ‘Accounts trainee’ in an Airline Ticketing Company for 6 months for USD 20/month. Meanwhile, I was doing a part-time Diploma Course in Business Management on weekends, and during that period, the banking job was considered a more recognizable job than others. Since I failed schooling final exam, I wasn’t qualified for banking, so, I joined a Third Party Banking Company as a coordinator for USD 40/month, I have gained lots of experience in how a sales team works in every company, administration activities, and human resource activities. Over my 18 months of employment time, the company has shut down their third-party services due to bankers agreement termination. Then, I left my job and supported my father’s business until I got another.
Resumes were sent to several companies, but no reply, due to incomplete studies and no experience. After a six-month gap, I got an opportunity to join my father’s colleague's office as an intern, I had no idea, what my work would be there, and no idea of what their business type was. The Operations Manager and CEO interviewed me, “I said I have no experience, but I can learn to adopt any work you offer. On my first day, my mind was reading “Inexperienced staff are generally sent to the accounts department for training”. A cabin was set up for me, with a PC, Telephone, Printer, a bunch of files, and a Cupboard with files and documents. A guy from the Account department came to me and said he’ll be resigning in a couple of days and he’ll train on what my job would be going forward. My job title will be Procurement Trainee with USD 33/month, to handle overall imports and exports of the company, I didn’t know the meaning of Procurement or even the difference between Import and Export.
The third day morning, my CEO called me, gave me a paper, with two purchase order numbers, and asked me to find the shipment schedule. After some time, called and gave a sheet of paper to place an order with the supplier. However, I managed to do the job with the help of the initial training from the accounts guy. I made a lot of errors in my job's initial stage and had excuses due to training. After 1 month, I understood that my senior pointed out mistakes in every work I did. and said that I wasn’t focusing on the job. I took that message mentally, thinking that, I was not qualified for that job and underestimated myself. I didn’t have support from peer employees either, everybody's mind reads me as an error-making person. This criticism continued for some time, I couldn’t learn practical work-related experience from any source due to a very limited contact base, I wasn’t using any smartphones, no computer at home, and loads of work at the office. Then, I started to get approval for every task I did to ensure I was right in the job, but a couple of days later Manager made fun of me saying “I am acting like a robotic baby”. Then I made a decision and accepted to get experience on my own by making mistakes and I am prouder to say, that I learned by myself.
After one year of service on the job, I learned a lot about Import and Export by making errors and correcting them. Due to the sudden resignation of the HR employee, I had to take over HR and Admin tasks with many more daily activities, After 3 years, I understood that I had no growth in my career, because the management continuously underestimated my talents and after completion of my Diploma studies, I couldn’t continue studies due to 14 hours of daily work and I had financial shortage as well. Moreover, I couldn't demand a salary increment or career promotion due to this underestimation by the management. So I decided to resign from that company, I still remember, how the management had made me mentally down in accepting it and requested to withdraw the same, I was sure that management would have understood the value of my job after my resignation (I am very thankful for that company and management for plugging me in supply chain and experience the startup job). Then, I shifted my job to another Corporate company, dealing with medical equipment and chemicals.  Meantime, I restarted my graduation aim, by completing Master of Science in Purchasing, Logistics, and Supply Chain Management. I am the luckiest person to learn and experience different scenarios daily in my job because the orders or shipments with any sort of complication are taken care of only by me in the overall department. Later on, I had to quit my job due to personal reasons and started to share my knowledge and experience with everybody in the supply chain via blog writing.
My childhood aim was to become an Advocate, but life has taken me to a more interesting supply chain area, which is one of the most important needs in any organization 
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