Businesses seeking to succeed in global markets face many business challenges, especially in navigating this quickly evolving and complex trade environment.

“If you’ve been looking at going global you probably already know what you need to do, but crucially, do you or your team know how to do it? In business, if you don’t have the know-how to go global, you’ll give your profits to someone else,” according to Caroline Tompkins, President and CEO of FITT.

Which begs the question, why go it alone?  Many businesses who are entering the international market add a certified global business expert to their staff, either through hiring or upskilling existing employees.

We wanted to learn more about the value of international business training so we asked our Certified International Trade Professionals (CITPs).

Illia Dumbadze, CITP – Best Driver Advanced Truck Driving School

Illia is a multilingual supply chain and logistics expert who has made an impact at major international corporations around the world. He has worked in many countries in North America, the UK, Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States over the course of his career in global trade.

Illia earned his Bachelor’s degree, and then a Master of Science degree in Logistics, Materials and Supply Chain Management from one of the top schools in the transport industry in Eastern Europe in 2011.

Illia is currently the Project Manager for Best Driver Advanced Truck Driving School. We asked him to tell us about his career and what the CITP designation means for his career development.

What problem does your business solve, and how?

Our company specializes in training and coaching professional drivers with a focus on:

• Education
• Professional development
• Coaching
• Personnel consulting

Best Driver provides expertise, training and coaching to transportation companies to optimize their performance. They provide solutions to save time and money, such as process improvements and best practices for safety and compliance:

– ECO driving (7-9% less fuel combustion after training)

– Safety driving (10-14% less accidents)

– Educational training (8-10% better communication with dispatchers)

While these numbers may seem small, improvements like this can make a big impact for a trucking company with a fleet of 200 trucks or more.

How is your organization involved in global trade?

Our company is actively seeking to expand into new markets in Europe and North America.

As a project manager at Best Driver, my main responsibility is to manage the delivery of our services and ensure that we provide a level of service that meets our customers expectations. Currently we are supplying over 200 professional drivers to more than 20 clients in countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland and Poland.

When I started to work with Best Driver in 2015, there were only 15 drivers and 3 instructors and we have grown to a team of 20 employees (office staff + instructors) and over 200 professionally trained drivers.

How has the CITP designation impacted your career?

It has a direct impact and contributes to my career in many ways. It gave me the knowledge of how to conduct international business, negotiate, and implement market entry strategies.

As an example, in my previous position at ECS where I worked as an International Fleet Planner, I implemented a project which saved the company on an annual basis, over € 100,000.

Why was getting CITP certified an important decision for you/your business?

Holding the CITP designation gives me more confidence and practical knowledge, which I’m using on a daily basis, solving different issues with customers and drivers.

What does having the CITP designation mean to you?

It’s been an honour for me to become a CITP and a member of FITT. Personally, it’s one of my best educational achievements.

What are some of your proudest achievements?

As the Project Manager at Best Driver, I reached a goal of 200 professional drivers certified within less than 15 months and I opened new markets in Ukraine and Georgia, where Best Driver provided training to 60 drivers within a 6 month period, to a standard of 95% of key performance indicators.

What is one piece of advice you would give to those who are just starting their international business careers?

“If you want the best, you have to work harder than the rest.” Meaning, that if you are a motivated person, you can always find a way to get what you are looking for. From my personal experience, I think that there is no such thing as a problem which cannot be solved – it’s only a matter of how.

Believe in yourself, and in all your thoughts and ideas, as only you know how to bring them to life and no one else will do it better.

The post CITP Business Spotlight – Illia Dumbadze, CITP appeared first on Trade Ready.

As an economics major I was being introduced to viewing the world from a macro point of view, so all of this began my passion for global business.

After I graduated from university, the global economy was in a significant downturn, and filled with economic uncertainty.

Given the climate of the job market, I decided to educate myself further in order to be able offer even more to an organization.

This is when I found FITT and the CITP®|FIBP® designation.

Taking a business education to the next level with international trade training

I took the FITT-accredited program at Mohawk College, and was immediately surrounded by people of European, Asian and South American decent. I thought back to what Thomas L. Friedman said in his book; the world truly is flat.

I soon learned different ways of doing business in countries around the world from my classmates and professors.

For example, have you ever received a business card from a Chinese business person? You’d better make sure you know how to accept it. In China, there are also certain colours that are not to be given as a gift. Black, for instance, is often associated with death. Also, many European and Asian suppliers and customers prefer establishing personal relationships before committing to long-term business. In contrast, North Americans can establish relationships and do business without even meeting in person!

The FITT-accredited program taught me everything from international marketing to global supply chain logistics. As someone who lacked physical experience in the global workforce, the program’s global business education equipped me with the tools I needed in order to succeed.

After graduating from the program, I was ready to apply my skills to a career, and I was fortunate enough to get hired by a medium-sized, publicly traded, international company located close to home.

The beginnings of a global career with an international company

Opta Minerals Inc. operates in four continents, selling loose abrasives and steel products and services.

I was able to recall and use many of the skills I had learned through my university career and particularly from my FITT-accredited training immediately after starting my career.

Incoterms, marketing strategies, terms of trade and research techniques became part of my daily routine. Pricing strategies for internal use and for customers can become confusing when dealing with different currencies, weight factors and freight costs, but developing this skill to think globally is something I use as an advantage to help others.

As a Market Research Analyst, it’s my job to assess the company’s current and future position, as well as the feasibility of new products. A large portion of my job involves understanding the trends and movements of our global competitors. This enables us to create proactive and, if required, reactive strategies.

A day in the life of an international Market Research Analyst

A day in my office consists of phone calls and emails to Asia and Europe in the morning and conversations with staff on the U.S. West Coast in the mid and late afternoon.

Stretching from one side of the globe to the other, I can almost feel the world spinning at my desk!

Working for a global enterprise has also enabled me to travel within and outside of Canada, attending trade shows and conferences. This has been extremely important for my communication and networking skills.

One experience that stands out for me was exhibiting at a trade show in Salt Lake City, UT. I was required to run the booth by myself and interact with every visitor as both of our sales reps’ flights were delayed until the next day due to inclement weather. This was a great learning experience because it forced me to chat with and get to know our potential customers in that market.

I’ve had many great accomplishments during my tenure at Opta Minerals. Within the last few months I fully integrated and launched a new product offering to our customers in Ontario. Almost everyone has baking soda in their fridge. But did you know that it can also be used as an abrasive -material? Well, I didn’t a few months ago. Together with my colleagues from the product and sales team, I found the new and desirable product we’d been searching for for quite some time.

From contract negotiations to marketing, I was responsible for the full product life-cycle of this new product. This required several face-to-face meetings with the supplier, going out to the market and finding interest, and determining what positive impact this would have on the company’s bottom line.

We understood where our competitors stood on pricing, and made every reasonable effort to use this to our advantage. We successfully sold and met the quantity expectations of the supplier within a three month span, and we continue to sell this product with great success.

For those pursuing a career in global business, I’d recommend that when you’re taking the road untraveled, you ask advice from those who have walked it before you.

You’ll be amazed to see what you can learn from a simple conversation with anyone who has international experience: on a plane, at a trade show or from your colleagues.

The post How global business education made the business world more accessible to me appeared first on Trade Ready.

If unemployment rates are down and companies are hiring again, then more people are working and there are fewer candidates to fill open jobs. This is obviously true, but there is much more to it than that.

There is a big difference between “talent” and any breathing individual who can fill the job.

We are all looking for the top talent, the change makers, the future leaders who will drive innovation, bring change, increase profits, propel growth and who make our companies better than they were before.

If you hire enough talent, it will be a change-maker for your business.

Where is the next generation of talented supply chain professionals?

During the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009, companies let people go and drastically slowed or stopped hiring all together.

As a result, there were a lot of talented supply chain and logistics professionals, mostly middle management, who left the industry after losing their jobs and did not return.

Part of the problem arose when time away from the industry left these employees unable to keep up with industry advancements in technology.

When companies started hiring again, they found these once-talented managers had left the industry and, in most cases, would not or could not return.

This put more pressure on hiring managers and human resources to seek out and hire younger employees as they were graduating from school.

Without chances to succeed, potential supply chain professionals are choosing other paths

Historically, however, our industry is not the strongest at developing and running supply chain and logistics internship programs.  And, unfortunately, the college and university programs that do are facing their own challenges.

Some college students whose programs have an internship requirement cannot find placements in their field due to the limited opportunities in their location. They often rely on more general business internships to fulfill their program requirements for graduation.

This is what causes the largest problem: talented logistics and supply chain students who are forced to take these more general internships, are in turn hired for general business roles during their internships, and never find their way into the logistics and supply chain industry.

Even after choosing the right program, doing well in their courses, and positioning themselves for a bright SCM career, the lack of opportunities to “get their foot in the door” to the industry is leading these students to other fields.

Further compounding the issue, I frequently hear from hiring managers that college graduates do not have “real world, on the job” training and experience.

“Really?,” I ask. “How many college interns did your company utilize this year?”

Usually, the response is…none.

Now, hopefully, the “talent shortage” is a bit clearer.

Providing opportunities for the best and brightest to get their start

We need to change this about our industry and we need to do it right away.  More companies need to offer and utilize supply chain and logistics-specific internships, to offer students that much needed experience in the field.

The biggest bonus for the company is that they get first access to top talent, whom they can hire full-time pending graduation. When we make this change, our industry receives top talent instead of having a talent shortage.

At Small World Recruiting, we have developed a Logistics and SCM Internship Board, www.scminterns.com, to support the industry because we feel that matching interns with companies who need them is a big step in the right direction.

Posting a resume is free for students, and we are starting to spread the word at colleges and universities, who are encouraging students to register.

However, we are really busy doing what we do best, recruiting mid-management and executive level roles within the industry.  For the board to be successful, we need your help.

So please, spread the word and share and post this article.

Encourage your HR team to develop an internship program, and then post the opportunity on our internship board so that logistics and supply chain students can find it and come to work for you after graduation.

As with anything, good things take time, but I hope that in a year or two this logistics and supply chain-focused internship board will be the source of finding top talent within our industry, and that we can finally say, “No, we don’t have a talent shortage.”

In fact, we will have access to the best talent the industry has ever seen.

The post We need to stop passing up new grads and develop talented candidates in the supply chain industry appeared first on Trade Ready.