Job duties
As a purchasing agent, you are in charge of buying everything for your company. You are not a wholesale or retail buyer who buys products for resale, but you do buy what is needed for your company to function optimally and maintain its operations. As a purchasing agent or manager, you may also buy services or supplies offered by contractors not within your company, like those who clean offices. Many businesses and government agencies, and institutions like hospitals and schools have need of the services of purchasing agents.
As a purchasing agent, your job is to make sure that your company has what it needs to run optimally at all times. It is a delicate balancing act, though, because you need to make sure that you do not have too much of your company's money invested in supply stocks. While the quality is important, cost has to be considered, too. For example, you may buy in bulk for office supplies like paper, break room supplies, and so on. If one of your tasks is to outfit your company with new office furniture, you may strike a deal with an office supply company to provide identical utilitarian office sets for everyone, instead of spending a lot of money on any one thing. In other words, you want to buy of high enough quality that what you buy is going to last when it needs to, but not so much that it becomes a waste. For example, in most cases, metal office filing cabinets will be a much better buy (and much cheaper) than similarly built but much more expensive oak ones. However, you must also avoid buying too cheaply, because having to replace equipment or furniture that is too cheap and breaks easily is going to cost you more money than it will save.
Among your job duties as a purchasing agent is that you keep abreast of market conditions and price trends so that you know what is going to affect what you buy. You can go on the Internet, determine costs and handling (which will be affected by such shipping-related costs as gas prices), and the shipping network expenses overall, such as those workers' wages.
The purchases you make must be timed right, too. Within any industry, most of the time, cost and supply adequacy vary within seasons. Therefore, it is one of your job duties to make sure that you buy when supplies are adequate but not in particularly high demand so that you can get the best price possible. If demand is low, it may also mean that you do not have enough; if demand is too high, there may be enough but you may have to pay more for it.
Often, you work to coordinate your company's schedule with outside suppliers' schedules. You will have to anticipate any delays suppliers are going to have so that you can take your business elsewhere or at least buy supplies ahead of time before these delays occur.
Depending on the size of your company, you may be one of many purchasing agents or managers, or you may be the only one, usually with several people working under you.
Education and training
To be a purchasing agent or manager, you will usually need a college degree and in some cases a master's degree. Most of the time, companies want to see people who have master's degrees in business administration or related field. Taking courses in traffic management, office management, marketing, and purchasing will give you an edge over applicants who do not have this type of experience. In addition, you will also need to be very familiar with word processing and spreadsheet software. Purchasing agents will need to have a thorough knowledge of their particular industry, so this may change your educational requirements significantly, or at least somewhat. For example, if you work for a chemical manufacturer, you will have to have a thorough knowledge of those chemicals, meaning that you usually need some type of science background and a master's degree in business administration or something related.
In some cases, you may work under another purchasing agent when you start, and then work your way "up the ladder" to become a purchasing agent or manager at a future time. Besides your formal educational background, you will also need on-the-job training and perhaps some classroom instruction. You may learn on the job, for example, by working in various departments when you first begin so that you learn what the company needs in its purchases throughout the whole company based upon hands-on experience. In most cases, this training lasts between one and five years.
Landing a job
Once you complete your education, you can check with your school placement office to see what jobs are available. Employment agencies, newspaper classifieds, and Internet job sites also have openings for purchasing agents, both entry-level and more advanced. In some cases, you can also apply directly to companies who are advertising for these types of positions. If you wish to work for the government, it is likely that you may have to take a civil-service test in addition to completing any other previous educational requirements, in order to get the job.
Salary and outlook
Purchasing agents and managers may find themselves in a bit of a tough time in coming years, because computers and the Internet itself allow for much more direct purchasing options. While this is good because it makes purchasing agents and managers much more efficient at their jobs, it also means that fewer additional agents and managers may be needed.
The average salary of purchasing agents across all industries was about $48,000 a year in 2004.
