Pavlina Tsvetanova’s article, published in Your Business Magazine

Every employer prefers to take trained workers with already cultivated working habits and proved success stories. The labor market offers less and less such options. The new generation is coming, there is enough work, but there is no one to pass the knowledge further in the chain. The employers pay higher salaries, fighting for narrow cycle of specialists, instead of to invest some time in cultivating new qualitative staff.

1. Tsvetanova, recently you registered a Center for Professional Education (CPE). What provoked this decision?

One of our services is to consult the companies how to improve their supply chain. Recently we face an interesting case – the companies have people, but lose them either due to poor organization or due to lack of training. E.g. there are many qualitative young people who want to learn and to work but there is no one to teach them and to transfer the knowledge. Some firms are forced to have a position “Trainer”, which usually is in the sales department and rarely includes the operational departments. The trainee programs not always give results as the skilled staff keep their knowledge in order to keep their place in the company. The new-comers try to show excellent results but they do not have the basis, so they cannot reveal their full potential – either they accept the low quality or they quit. We had a case when an employee should leave for pension deliberately refused to train the new colleague for the position. Thus we decided to enlarge the scope of our trainings. Apart from that, one CPE would help the current and future employees and employers. We want to be the bridge between employees and employers. Our aim is by transmitting knowledge and skills, to help the companies to hire more valuable staff, who would bring faster high results.

2. How your CPE would help?

The first benefit is the quality in learning. The lecturers in our center are professionals with more than 15-years’ experience in their specialty. Each of them has proved as an expert – it’s a fact that our lecturers occupy senior management positions and have reached this level by learning and hard work. They are practitioners who are willing to pass the knowledge further. E.g. the teaching in our center is focused to solving real business cases – the theory is accepted and learned by practices and solving examples. Our trainings include all areas in supply chain and are applicable in many business sectors.

A very important aspect for the high quality training is that the trainees should be present at our courses. Unlike many other CPE where the trainees receive textbooks and video materials and the lecture material is significantly reduced (to achieve lower price), we teach in presence. We want to explain the cases in direct contact with the audience, to provoke thinking and decision taking in participants.

The practical part is at our partners’ offices, who have proved as successful companies on the Bulgarian and international market.

The second benefit is that the employers may have already trained personnel and would skip the 5-6 months’ adaptive period when the employer pays salaries but the employees still do not reach the targets. Our aim is to save the employers efforts and to provide him staff that can work effectively from the second month ahead. Then there will be no need to steal staff from the competition. Apart from that, it will not be necessary any more the employer to take his best employees to train the new-comers. The experienced employees put their time in training someone who may not stay in the company and during the training they do not earn money as they do not close deals. Such situation makes the experienced people nervous because they cannot reach the maximum bonuses due to wasting time in other activities, like teaching.

The third benefit is that the good trainees will start a guaranteed job at our partners. Every trainee who has passed the exams with a mark more than 4,50 or who has shown very good results during the course, may choose where to work while studying in our center. And at the end, the trainee receives a legitimate diploma, issued by the Ministry of education, which diploma is valid in EU.

Also, instead of collecting information and experience chaotically, the people may receive the essence for every profession in our center. It is difficult for the employees focused on the operational work to find some time and search sources for upgrading the knowledge. If an employee wants to change his profession and to move to supply chain, it is enough to pass our professional courses – he would acquire knowledge and skills for the main problems and would know how to solve them. We show the shortcut to the professional upgrade and support the trainees after the courses.

3. Why do you want to train staff for the transport sector too?

There are more than 1000 CPE on the market, but the CPE that offer trainings in transport area are just few. On the other hand, transportation sector is increasing fast while the trained staff is not enough. I think it is a pity, after graduating school young people to start working in call centers rather than in logistics, just because they are not well oriented for the other options. Transportation offers perfect conditions for carrier development, quick hierarchy growth and competitive salaries. We are concentrated in trainings in supply chain because we are all practitioners in this area. Our aim is to transfer the knowledge and skills, not only to register activity.

It is also visible that there are fluctuations of people from one supply chain area to another: for example, often warehouse workers choose to be couriers or drivers. And because people working in transport and in warehouse are energetic people, they prefer to work where dynamics is. That is why is it very rare logistics specialist to move to other activities like finance for instance.

There are many options for professional and personal growth in supply chain. The professions which we have license for are: Buyer, Customs broker, Courier, Forwarder.  Except them, we also do practical trainings for the operational departments (planning, logistics, purchasing, warehouse), because it appeared that there are trainings for the managers but there are no trainings for the employees. And the employees must fulfil the company goals. Our practice shows that people want to study and develop themselves.  That is why we created one- and two-days trainings concerning every profession in supply chain. And acknowledgement for our quality is that the companies send their employees and return for more knowledge.