'Hands-on expertise the benchmark'

IN THE national search for skilled staff for the freight industry, experience is a key word in assessing employment prospects, according to Jolene Payne, Durban branch manager of Communicate Personnel, the subsidiary of the Advtech group which specialises in servicing the employment needs of the freight and logistics industries. “In judging applicants,” she told FTW, “experience always prevails over formalised training when it comes to gauging the skill of human resources.” Not that she ignores specialised training results. “They have to come into play,” Payne added, “but hands-on expertise is a better benchmark of the likely skills level of potential employees.” But the freight industry in SA is currently short of skills – as is the complaint in most industry sectors in this country – and the demand for experienced staff, particularly on the sales side, is huge. However, the industry’s attitude to generating skilled employees in its ranks has improved over the last eight months to a year, according to Payne. “I’m delighted to see that companies in the freight, forwarding and logistics sectors have become wise to the benefits of employing staff at a junior level,” she said, “and training them up internally. “This is a valuable addition to the skills pool, and a very necessary attribute to fulfilling future needs.” Communicate Personnel specialises in dealing with companies in the ship's agency, clearing and forwarding (c&f), road freight and courier/express sectors. “In ships' agencies we tend to handle mostly sales executives and key account managers,” said Payne. “The same is true in the forwarding industry, but there is also a large demand for people with operations skills – import/ export controllers, entry clerks and the like. “For the road freight and courier/express industries it’s again sales staff and account managers, but with the road freight operations also tending to need warehouse managers and operations personnel.”