Do You Have a Procurement Skills Gap, or a Procurement Structure Problem?
By Procurement

When a procurement function isn’t delivering, the first instinct is usually to hire more people, a specialist, or an interim to plug the gap. Often that instinct is right. What decides whether it works is whether you’ve identified the right kind of hire, and whether the set-up around them lets them succeed. If you’re a CPO, or an HR or talent leader helping decide what comes next, you need to decide one thing before you scope a hire. That is whether you have a procurement skills gap, a structure problem, or both. This article sets out how to tell the difference, and what each means for the hire.

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Why the Right Hire Depends on the Diagnosis

Hiring is visible and quick to approve, which is why it’s the default response. But “we need a hire” covers a variety of very different decisions. Do you need a permanent team member, a scarce specialist, an interim for a defined piece of work, or do you need to change how the team is set up. Each is right in some situations and wrong in others.

Getting the diagnosis right means the person you bring in has a clear mandate, the backing to do it and a reason to stay. Getting it wrong means a good hire arrives inside the same set-up as the last one and meets the same obstacles.

Signs the Set-Up Needs Attention Alongside the Hire

These are the signs you have structural issues that can affect success:

  • The same problems survive every new hire. If the role is a replacement, find out where the last person struggled and why. In my experience, it tells you a lot. If the answer is about access, sponsorship or decision rights rather than ability, the next hire will need those addressed too.
  • Procurement sees the purchase after the decision is made. At that point, the function is reduced to paperwork, however good the people are. A new hire needs a change in when procurement is involved to make the difference you’re hiring them for.
  • The mandate doesn’t match the backing. A transformation brief with no named executive sponsor or approved investment sets any hire up to struggle.
  • Spend is fragmented by design. Where the business buys freely below a threshold, the supplier base fragments. That is an operating model issue, so a category hire will need data and preferred supplier lists behind them.
  • The team is being asked to run two agendas at once. A team can spend a year building an ESG programme, then be told to drop it for a cost-saving drive and still keep both alive with the same headcount. Deloitte found 46% of CPOs cited competing priorities diluting focus as a top barrier. A hire helps most when the team is clear which agenda comes first.

Signs You Have a Skills Gap

These are the situations that highlight a procurement skills gap where a new hire is the right answer:

  • The work has changed and the team hasn’t. If your team was built to administer contracts and the business now expects it to shape categories, that is a genuine capability gap.
  • The gap is specific and everyone agrees on it. You can name it: leading change through ambiguity, commercial and category strategy, using data to challenge numbers rather than just report them, or embedding AI. On that last one, Deloitte found 40% of CPOs cited organisational or technology capability to support execution as a top barrier.
  • The skill is scarce. The candidate picture varies by role. There’s a genuine surplus for some and a real shortage for trickier, specialist procurement skills. If the capability you need sits in the second group, a hiring plan that moves fast matters even more.

If It’s a Skills Gap Should You Build, Buy or Borrow

Once you’ve confirmed a procurement skills gap, the next decision is how to close it. There are three routes, and they solve different problems.

Build when your team is close but not quite there. Negotiation, stakeholder management and working alongside AI tools can often be developed internally. One approach I’ve come across is using AI to run simulated negotiations, a scenario such as a £100m facilities management contract with feedback afterwards, so people build the skill without risking real money.

Buy when the gap is permanent, and training can’t close it within the patience the business has. That means a permanent hire, and for scarce procurement skills it’s where specialist market knowledge matters most: what the skill realistically costs, how many people have it and how long a search will take. Be honest about timing too. Most candidates are on two to three months’ notice, and procurement teams are often recruiting for their own function while being told to cut costs elsewhere, so the day job wins and the process slows. I’ve seen a process for a £45k buyer role run to four stages, including COO and CFO sign-off. In a market where speed matters, that costs hirers good people.

Borrow when a priority has shifted faster than your headcount can. If the board wants a third-party risk review or a category overhaul before a renewal date, an interim brings experience for exactly as long as the work takes, without carrying the headcount afterwards. Interim hiring is hard to see from outside because most of it is relationship-led, with clients asking who’s available rather than advertising. Even in advertised data, fixed-term roles grew 16.6% in Q3, though they remain only 5.4% of vacancies.

Structural fixes are less glamorous than a new hire, but they decide how well the hire works, and they don’t have to delay it. Agree who sponsors the function and what has actually been funded. Decide at what point procurement gets involved in a purchase, not just whether it does. Put data and preferred supplier lists behind the freedom you give the business. And be clear about which agenda comes first when priorities compete. With most candidates on two to three months’ notice, that work can happen while the search is running, so the person starts into a role that’s ready for them.

In Practice, It’s Usually Both

The data suggests both matter. In Deloitte’s survey of more than 250 chief procurement officers across 40 countries, 57% named siloed ways of working as a top barrier to delivering value, and 34% named the talent gap. Capability and structure are both holding functions back, and the hires that deliver tend to be the ones where both are addressed together.

A common pattern is a real capability gap sitting inside a set-up that wouldn’t let a new hire use their skills. That’s why the best approach is to scope the hire and the set-up together, and to use the search itself to test the brief. Good candidates ask who sponsors the role, what has been funded and how success is measured, and their questions often show you what still needs settling.

This is also where an interim can earn its place. If a structural change will take six months and the business can’t wait, an interim brings in capability straight away while the permanent team takes shape.

Five Questions to Answer Before You Brief a Hire

Answering these questions takes an hour, not a quarter, and it means the hire you make is the right type of hire, set up to succeed and to stay.

  1. What exactly is underperforming, and can we name it?
  2. If we hired the ideal person tomorrow, would the set-up let them succeed?
  3. Is there a named executive sponsor, and is the investment approved?
  4. Is the need permanent, or tied to a particular project or deadline?
  5. How quickly do we need it, and can our hiring process move at that speed?

If you’ve been through this decision, what would you add to that list?

I work with procurement leaders on scoping and filling roles across permanent and interim talent, and on what the market looks like for them. If you’re thinking about a hire, get in touch with Cedar’s specialist Procurement & Supply Chain team.  Or contact me directly at [email protected]