Another big issue that’s been coming up over and over again at Ariba LIVE this year is the challenge of finding and retaining good, qualified people. Staff retention is still a huge challenge for category experts, procurement and strategic sourcing roles. And if Professor Wheelan’s concerns about education stagnation aren’t remedied, this problem could continue for a long, long time.

Roy Anderson described an interesting program that MetLife has set up with Rutgers’ Center for Supply Chain Management to help fill the ranks of their procurement department with top, upwardly mobile talent. Over the course of two years, the recent grads are trained and prepared to take over leadership roles. In the words of Roy, the young professionals are then equipped to “lead in the next generation of procurement.” But Roy leads a literally award winning procurement department. So, it’s hard to imagine the challenges they face are worse than average.

But if you think finding talent in the US is bad…try the rest of the world. In a session on LCCS I attended yesterday, the issues around effectively staffing an International Purchasing Office (IPO) were raised by all three panelists and even some audience members. Aside from the usual cultural (corporate and regional), language and time-zone issues, simply finding job candidates with the right skillset is tough. And that’s not just for countries with sub-standard education, as an audience member from Emerson pointed out. He said that even with competitive salary offers and a well known company, they’ve had open positions for months…in India…where there’s a highly educated workforce.

This is definitely an issue we’ll explore more on the blog in the future. So if you have any thoughts about the causes and cures, please drop me an email or post in the Comment section.

Justin Fogarty is the Managing Editor of Supply Excellence and will be covering Ariba LIVE 2008 from Las Vegas this week. If you have any questions or feedback about the event or blog, you can reach Justin at jfogarty[at]ariba[dot]com.