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hello my name is alan from abts training services in london england and during this webinar i'm going to talk to you about working in international logistics are putting another name on it [Music] finding a career in international logistics i want to show you how a career in logistics can be challenging and rewarding and logistics offers so many possibilities it's it's a vehicle to for you to move forward in your career it's not a static job that is the the the one of the wonderful things about working in logistics and as you can see already i'm particularly enthusiastic about logistics um okay so just let me give you a quick background to um underline what i've just said about it's a wonderful career path it's interesting and dare i say exciting at times so let me just give you a quick cv to put everything in perspective i entered logistics many many years ago purely by chance it never entered my career mind that i should get involved in logistics never my discipline my training was as an accountant uh completely different than logistics so my path in logistics started off purely by chance and i thank the stars for that that uh i i saw the light so to speak um it started off by um as i was working for a company as what we used to call in the good old days as an office manager an accountant office manager and i became involved with an importation we were having from chicago in the usa and i had phone calls from freight forwarders and a clearing agent and there was lots of problems involved with this consignment and the more i got involved the more i liked it i i found there was a buzz there it was totally different than a disciplined accountant it gave you wings you could think for yourself so i decided there and then that's it from now on i'm going to pursue a career in logistics international logistics and which i did for about 40 years which i did and during those 40 years as i learnt more and bearing in mind it was learning um on the hoof as they say we didn't have uh colleges or a further education we could go to in the evening um to study logistics there was a few books around mainly from memory coming out of america but that's besides the point um so during me i took a heck of a dive in salary and i started off with the inner company in london in the uk as a import clock really hit me financially and press d wise it wasn't very nice what are you i'm an import cloak but i learned i absorbed everything like a sponge the more i learned the more excited i was about international uh trade i thought this is this is wonderful logistics is so challenging the whole shebang is challenging okay so moving very fast forward um eventually eventually i handed in my notice as they say and i opened my own freight forwarding business from that freight forwarding business i became a logistics consultant and i was very fortunate to work as an independent consultant for about 12 years with the un uh with the various un bodies unhcr unicef who and lots of these guys very privileged and my job is to go around the world literally go around the world um training un staff and also problem solving with local governments uh import departments etc are bringing relief aid in et cetera et cetera et cetera so i it was i didn't mind if i wasn't paid a penny it was the buzz it was the honor to be working with the un and to helping getting food into refugees through the logistical hot spots wonderful wonderful wonderful okay i went on from there and i was invited to set up a course a mba international business course in a university in london a well-known university in london i set that course up and for the first term from memory um maybe two terms i forget um i was the lecturer so i was lecturing facilitating and writing an mba international business course very rewarding mentally and financially very very rewarding um and that grew that grew and i found myself um as a guest lecturer at a university in izmir in turkey um and as a consultant now that started off by me being involved in a importation 40 years ago that went wrong and i am grateful that i was involved because i wouldn't be sitting here in front of you telling you about um international logistics as a career path so the point i want to get over is that it's not what you and i would call a dead-end job you're expanding all the time and you can grow with it as much as you want to grow with it you're not sitting behind a desk as i was as an import clerk 40 years ago on a very miserable salary you grow you're like a seed the seed is planted you water it and it grows and it's the same in a career in logistics it grows if you wanted to you could be static um some of my colleagues were in their position in a company as the shipping manager for 30 years and they loved it they never moved never aspired to consulting or freight forwarding and you know blah blah blah no they loved it they just loved it so much that they stayed in that company so you can come progress or you can stay it all depends on your character it all depends on your ambition so what i'm going to do is i'm going to look at possibilities where you can move into to become involved in international logistics international trade and i'm going to start with what i was at one stage a freight forwarder joining a freight forwarding company now when you join a freight forwarding company um they usually usually they want experience or at least some academic qualification in logistics it's so different than my day so you've got to prove yourself we'll discuss that later we'll discuss that later so freight forwarding offers a wonderful opportunity you can you become involved in every aspect of logistics of international logistics and i used to say to my students at the university um when they say to me you know how how can we progress now academically we're bang on but practically how can we progress and i said well you could apply for a lowly job in a freight forwarding company take a hit financially for a year if you can afford to learn all you can become a sponge learn all you can use it as a stepping stone or stay there very rewarding career freight forwarding you could apply for a job in a clearing agency customs clearing agency again i am talking from a uk perspective and i stress that because in some countries you need to qualify and sit an exam to become a broker or a clearing agent so i am quite conscious of that fact so in a clearing agency it's it's more narrow your field of expertise is more narrow it's important it's customs clearing it's talking to customs officers it's solving problems with importation but you're learning you're learning all the time and again you can enter as an apprentice for the want of a better word okay we come to two main ones now for a career path shipping lines and airlines let's start with shipping lines many of the big names and and for fairly obvious reasons i'm not going to talk about particular uh shipping line uh shipping line companies and give them free advertising um the big boys the main players the top five seven main players they offer apprenticeships and they are absolutely wonderful they they will take you on some some of them will require graduates again some of my my students when they were awarded their mba they went into shipping lines uh uh on my um advice and um so some of them need it will only entertain an apprenticeship for graduates others don't if you're a bright young spark and they think you have what it takes they will take you on wonderful wonderful wonderful it's a gift from the gods you go through a wonderful wonderful apprenticeship and you can be there for a year a year and a half before they release you out into their office and give you a proper job with the proper salary but if you can attain an apprenticeship with a freight with a shipping line and it's the same with airlines if you can attain obtain an apprenticeship go for it and if you're thinking of going into international logistics try it try apply i had one student in uh went back to their home base in toronto canada and i gave them the name of two leading shipping lines in canada and they applied about three i forget three or four times and on the fourth or whatever it was time they were successful with their application so do try that with the main freight forwarders of this world they also have apprenticeships so try and go online see what apprenticeships they offer and apply there's no harm as i said my canadian student i think was three times they refused and then on the fourth or the last time that they they were uh awarded uh an apprenticeship um besides that and just referring to my notes here um commercial organizations companies you can join a company again like i did in a fairly lowly position because i i'm assuming viewer that um you have you do not have a qualification in logistics and to be quite frank with you uh academic qualifications and logistics are few and far between to be quite to be quite honest with you um commercial organizations companies think about it this way a company can offer you a logistics experience in various departments for instance the sales department the overseas sales department yeah i'm saying sales and we're talking about logistics but i'm i'm saying sales um i i did say to you in my brief cv that uh i act as a consultant in many companies worldwide and one of the departments i i talked to is the sales department the international sales department because these ladies and gentlemen are wonderful with product knowledge with going out to the customer clinching an order but they are crummy when it comes to talking logistics speak for instance they can be sitting in an office and the potential buyer will say well could you quote me uh cif on that please or x-works or fca in other words inca terms and they just look at them and you go you what okay so you do in sales good companies professional companies in export sales international sales always have a backup person of persons in the office who can talk the talk so if the sales person is and i've got to be very careful here with salesman saleswoman as sales person is in the field they can always get on the mobile and say um alan i'm sitting with joe blogs in dubai and he's talking about a cif contract what's it all about okay so commercial sales international sales department are always good departments are always looking for people possibly with sales ability but with international trade international logistics ability it's part and parcel and in the certain areas for instance methods of payment methods of payment in commercial companies that sell overseas is a very gray area because the potential buyer will say um i i want to pay by cash against documents documentary collection or a letter of credit and not many of the salespeople understand a letter of credit or cash against documents so in sales there's opportunities in sales for you in overseas sales and in the same company they might have an import and export department there's always opportunity for good i emphasize good personnel lots of people are going around getting jobs in exporting and importing and they will say i've got 12 years knowledge um with international logistics but they've 12 years knowledge of shipping to one country take any country poland comes to mind but 12 years shipping to one country doesn't make you an expert in logistics so you can approach companies and if you have experience with the different markets there's always a job for you now we're going as i speak we're going through a world pandemic contradiction to terms there but we're going through a pandemic and there's not many jobs around and i'm speaking from a uk perspective not many jobs around but ships sail airplanes fly trucks go trucking international trade still continues it is one of the areas less or least affected by a present horrible situation so what i'm putting over to you is there's always need for good people good trained people in international logistics okay we can see there that um you can either work in a commercial company in this export sales department input export department now let's just suppose you you've gained enough knowledge you can go on your own like i did you see it's a career path particularly for you young people it's a career path you can start your own consultancy like i did you might have the honor like i did to work for the un you have the opportunity possible opportunity for world travel if you like world travel or you might be more entrepreneurial and you might say to heck with working for somebody else although i've got a good position in logistics i want to do it myself so you could start your own import export agency which i did during my career [Music] i can say uh successfully successfully didn't make me millionaire but successfully uh great satisfaction so you could become an agent and when you become an agent or to become an agent you need bucket loads of logistics information so i'm going to finish here and the purpose of this webinar was to get your mind thinking how about a career in logistics alan just said it's not boring and i can move around i'm not stuck selling one item or in one job which i can do in my sleep with a dead end dead-end future but with a limited future logistics trust me logistics is unlimited unlimited you can go here you can go there you can become this you can become it's up to you how you progress but the pathway is there for you and i would say to any of you watching this webinar that is interested in taking up a career in logistics please do so please go ahead it's it's such a wonderful career it's a heartache you want to go home and kick the cat some evenings after a hard day but it's so rewarding it's so rewarding now abts we run online courses we run a course very well received for i don't know 12 13 years now um in import and export procedure we run a course um quite recently we just run it out out of a demand um letters of credit and we've just started a course called how to become an agent commission agent a stocker's agent now if you attended the import export course it's written by me thinking as a person like i was 40 years ago hadn't a clue what i was doing in logistics it's written with a person in mind that wants to get into logistics but doesn't have the practical or academic knowledge so our import expo course is 100 pure practical you can go for an interview and if your interviewer says to you yeah yes yes that's all very well but you don't have practical knowledge you can say no no i don't i have theoretical knowledge so if i join your company i hit the ground running if you ask me to um [Music] open a letter of credit i could do it i don't have to ask you so what i'm saying is if anybody watching this webinar is interested in a career in logistics i would shout from the highest roof go for it go for it number one number two if you say well i don't have the practical knowledge i would say go to course go to course lots of courses all over the world go of course but of course i would say to you and if possible join our course because i'm here to help you as a backup and our courses are practical courses so i'm going to leave you with that i'm going to leave you with i hope enthusiasm food for thought i would like to go into logistics i don't know where to start like i was an accountant a trainee accountant where do you start nowadays it's much easier you've got it so easy nowadays in my day it was graft you made every mistake and hope to goodness your boss didn't fire you but there you go that's the way life is so all i would say to you is go for it i've given you a few avenues a freight forwarder clearing agent apprenticeships in both of those apprenticeships with shipping lines apprenticeships with airlines and if you don't like to be desk bound you can work as a salesperson for a shipping line an airline a freight forwarder a clearing agent you're out all day you're getting clients you're talking the talk of international logistics so there's lots of opportunities so what i would say is if you're going to go forward into a career in logistics go for it go for it stick to it it will open so many possibilities for you and don't forget if you if you need training i'm here for you and go on to our website uh abts logistics dutco.uk and it's all there as i say i'm only too happy to help you thank you for watching my webinar i hope you enjoyed it and i hope you're going to jump up now register in a course and start thinking about a career in logistics so to my next webinar i i say to you all out there keep safe and keep well and um goodbye for me