Buyer

Hi, my name is Lisa. I have been a buyer in the Real Estate division at Societe Generale since September 2018. The buyer's job is to find the best response to a need that has been expressed. This involves four major points. The first is understanding the need expressed and challenging it. The second is knowing how to address this need on the market, which means building a purchasing strategy with allocations and an appropriate panel. The third is carrying out the act of purchasing, from consultation to negotiation, right through to the contract. The fourth, which is very important, is monitoring and deploying this service. We are a true business partner for our professions, enabling them to optimise their cost/quality ratio, while controlling the risks of their processes.

One of the highlights of the buyer's business is being on the front line when it comes to innovation. Thanks to the special relationship we have with suppliers, we can regularly visit their factories, challenge them when it comes to new needs, participate with them in discussion groups and have them work on prototypes. It's a very interesting environment and you get out from behind your desk. The first of three key points that make a good buyer is being a category leader. This means having mastered the category of your purchase, knowing your product and service. This goes with the second point which is knowing your market well, knowing whether these are markets with many players, few players, whether they are strategic, if they have a lot of power, if they have little power, whether this is a market to develop. Obviously the third point is knowing your internal partners and their needs well and supporting them in the challenge created by this need.

To be a good buyer you have to have a good team spirit because you have to work with a whole range of services, both internally and externally. You have to have a good level of English because you are working in an international context. You have to be pragmatic because you can't forget that you're purchasing for a purpose. What's really lovely when you arrive as a new hire at Societe Generale is that you go through an extremely well-developed on-boarding process. Right away you meet the departments and people with whom you are going to work, so you are operational quickly. Secondly, the strength of the Group and its size is that it offers us a multitude of opportunities for development and mobility. We have an extremely well-developed HR career path. Don't wait any longer, come join us.