How To Become A Procurement Consultant: What It Is and Career Path

What is a procurement consultant and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Daniel Kruger

Buying supplies for a business is not as easy as just going to the store and visiting the checkout counter. Procurement is a complicated process that involves negotiating contracts, building relationships with vendors, and keeping track of market trends. The procurement consultant is an expert in this process, which is a great help to the business owners that hire them.

Often, the procurement consultant works as an independent advisor that makes expert recommendations to businesses on their procurement policy. They can negotiate better contracts with vendors, make recommendations for improving procurement systems, and offer general advice to executives.

Procurement consultants often (but not always) have bachelor's degrees and years of experience in business and procurement. Often, their years of experience helped them develop excellent relationships with vendors and clients. An excellent procurement consultant can help a business save money and improve profits, to the great relief of executives.

What general advice would you give to a procurement consultant?

Daniel Kruger

Academic Affairs Manager, NASPO

The procurement profession, like many industries, has undergone a shift as a result of the pandemic. NASPO is seeing states adjusting to revised bidding processes that include more eProcurement systems, and work from home is also a significant change for many state employees. New graduates will need to navigate the hiring process and onboarding potentially without a physical office or in-person collaboration with coworkers, so they need to be comfortable with technology and even a bit more extroverted early on to make those connections. This will require strong communication and interpersonal skills. Data analytics and supply chain knowledge continue to be critical, as well.

ScoreProcurement ConsultantUS Average

Salary

6.3

Avg. Salary $81,254

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

8.1

Growth rate -6%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.2

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.31%

Asian 7.50%

Black or African American 9.17%

Hispanic or Latino 12.45%

Unknown 3.83%

White 66.75%

Gender

female 33.72%

male 66.28%

Age - 47

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 47

Stress level

8.1

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.7

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.4

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a procurement consultant

Explore procurement consultant education requirements

Most common procurement consultant degrees

Bachelor's

65.8 %

Master's

20.5 %

Associate

9.4 %

Start to develop specific procurement consultant skills

Skills	Percentages
Strategic Sourcing	8.90%
Procure-To-Pay	7.27%
HR	6.18%
Cost Savings	5.82%
Business Process	5.51%

Complete relevant procurement consultant training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New procurement consultants learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a procurement consultant based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real procurement consultant resumes.

Research procurement consultant duties and responsibilities

Manage RFI, RFQ and RTP process for all procurement, marketing and advertisement requirements.
Manage several SDLC phases for enterprise systems used by state government agencies to perform environmental and environmental management.
Train internal customers for creating purchase orders in Ariba.
Process NCQA/HEDIS audit contract requests through Ariba and DocuSign procurement systems.

Prepare your procurement consultant resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your procurement consultant resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a procurement consultant resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable procurement consultant resume templates

Build a professional procurement consultant resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your procurement consultant resume.