Want to join the workforce as a shipping industry professional?
It’s an excellent opportunity to build a successful career, considering that the demand for logistics managers in the shipping industry keeps growing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the need for logisticians will grow steadily by 4% every year until 2029. Besides, the average yearly salary of $74,000 is quite attractive.
Of course, as in any other industry, your success in shipping and logistics will depend on your personal qualities that should put you above your competitors.
So, which personal qualities do you need to succeed as a specialist in the shipping industry?
Let’s take a look.
1. Strategic Thinking
In the shipping industry, strategic logistics plans play a vital role. These are business plans that set the company’s strategy of delivering products and services to customers.
Developing an elaborate logistics plan requires great strategic thinking skills, including:
- research and analysis
- risk management
- critical thinking
- comparative analysis
All these skills matter in data management and the organization of resources. If you can think strategically, you will have a better understanding, which aspects of a logistics plan can be outsourced and catered to in-house. As a result, strategic thinking makes you resourceful and result-oriented, which are two other essential personal qualities of a successful logistician.
2. Problem Solving
A shipping industry professional’s job is often about putting out fires. There are a lot of issues that are out of your control, such as malfunctions at a port or problems with a delivery vehicle. As a result, you need to be a great problem solver to make urgent decisions when necessary.
Professionals at the University of Tennessee Knoxville define the following skills as problem-solving abilities:
- identifying problems in the supply chain
- finding trends and opportunities within the industry and applying them as solutions
- leveraging data and technology to find bottlenecks and eliminate them
- generating the data to make informed decisions
- collaborating with the team of logisticians to find solutions
Sometimes, to solve a supply chain problem, you will have to change logistics plans completely. Such a move also requires you to be confident and self-reliant. Such personal qualities also help shipping industry professionals withstand stress and remain calm in difficult situations.
3. Foreign Language Skills
The nature of the logistician’s job requires you to be a good communicator, and not just in your native language. You’ll often have to talk with suppliers from different countries, and they might not always know English. Besides, there’s a chance you’ll have to work with different documents in a foreign language.
So, learning a foreign language might be pivotal for your career in logistics. You can start by learning basic Spanish, as it is one of the most common languages in the shipping industry. Knowing just a few common phrases in Spanish can already help you establish a rapport with the suppliers from Spanish-speaking countries.
On a broader scale, learning foreign languages also ingrains other qualities important for a successful logistician – open-mindedness and flexibility. As you explore different cultures through foreign languages, your personality becomes more well-rounded and open.
4. Organizational Skills
It’s very hard to imagine a shipping industry professional with bad management and organizational skills. There is a lot on the line if a document gets misplaced – the cargo will be shipped to the wrong port or lost on the way. As a result, the reputation of the entire company suffers.
That’s why, if you want to build a successful career in the shipping and logistics industry, you need to have the following organizational skills:
- delegation
- goal-setting
- time management
- project management
- team management
- prioritization
- collaboration
These organizational skills should become your nature. A lot depends on how you organize your work and the work of others.
5. Negotiation Skills
One more personal quality of a successful shipping industry professional is being a good negotiator.
In your job, you’ll have to meet many decision-makers from other companies and work on different deals with them. There is a chance that some of them will be difficult to work with, so you need good negotiation skills to persuade them.
As a shipping and logistics specialist, you should have the knowledge of different varieties, and types of negotiations (distributive and integrative), as well as have the following negotiation skills:
- building a rapport
- active listening
- verbal communication
- written communication
- conflict management
Much like organizational skills, negotiation skills should become your second nature. You should be natural at reading people and leveraging their personal qualities to close deals.
Wrapping Up
As you can see, there are quite a few peculiar qualities that should be part of a successful logistician’s personality. You should be a great strategic thinker, problem-solver, and negotiator with great organizational abilities and knowledge of at least one foreign language.
All these qualities indeed sound very overwhelming, but you are not born with them. You can acquire these qualities through training and experience. But the sooner you start working on them, the better.
