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I was on a coaching call recently with someone trying to break into supply chain. He had been working at a quick-service restaurant for six years, started in high school, worked his way up to director while finishing his degree.
I asked him to just walk me through his day. No pressure, no prep. Just tell me what you do.
And for the next eight minutes, he described everything a supply chain professional does, without realizing it.
He was managing inventory through a forecasting system, ordering product based on historical demand, adjusting quantities based on the day of the week. He was tracking labor costs in real time, reallocating his team when bottlenecks showed up, and keeping throughput under a five-minute cycle time. He was pulling customer satisfaction data, identifying root causes when scores dipped, and making adjustments the next shift. When a supplier shorted his delivery at 5 AM, he sourced product from a nearby location and had the line running before the doors opened.
When he finished, I asked him: "Do you realize what you just spent the last eight minutes doing?"
He didn't.
I said, "You just described everything transferable to supply chain. Systems, inventory management, problem solving, collaboration, labor optimization. All of it."
And then I pulled up his resume. None of it was on there.
Instead, it was full of lines like "achieved optimal labor utilization through effective staffing optimization strategies." I asked him to be honest with me. He laughed and said yeah, he had taken his job duties and asked AI to make them sound like supply chain.
The real experience was better than anything AI could have written. He just hadn't learned how to translate it yet.
Here's what I want you to take from this.
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