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Seeking Fulfillment/Distribution Operations Management Role

Veteran

Nate Swope

Hello,

Anyone work for Amazon or a similar .com who can help mentor me to advance to the next level in my career? For the past 3 years I've worked in fulfillment ops as an area manager. I was a Recon Marine before that and served 8 years in the USMC. Any help is greatly appreciated.

2 October 2016 5 replies Career Advancement

Answers

Advisor

Tim Feemster Dallas, TX

Walmart is planning on opening 10 new ecommerce fulfilment centers in the next year. They would be an excellent target company. They also have a public commitment to hire vets by the thousands. You could be one of their success stories.

Advisor

William Hinz Seaford, DE

Hi Nate,
I am not sure what your long term objectives are but I would suggest you consider looking into APICS Certification as a way to enhance your resume. Take a look at this website for more information.
http://www.apics.org/careers-education-professional-development/certification/cpim

Good Luck!

Bill Hinz

Advisor

John Green Cary, NC

Hi Nate -

Wish you all the best on your search.

Amazon and most other Logistics companies use automation to manage their PPS (Pick Pack Ship) functions. Where an Amazon employee used to wander stacks of shelves to pick up merchandise for orders before finally returning to his/her station to place them in bins and send them to their next stop; Now, a Kiva robot zooms around the shelves instead, picking up goods and carrying them to the human at his/her station. What used to take hours of walking can happen in mere minutes instead.

To this end, the human resource requirement has shifted from someone who can walk around the warehouse or manage human workers to a more specialized, skilled worker who can manage and interface with robots instead.

Here is a post for Amazon's top position in this field (note the software development skills) :

https://www.amazonrobotics.com/#/careers/detail/ae663cd7-b8b8-4e2d-98b7-114054ee7457

TECHNICAL PROGRAM MANAGER - JOB MANAGER TEAM

We are seeking a talented and motivated Technical Program Manager in the Software Engineering organization. This position will take high-level, strategic business requirements and drive their success by managing the product roadmap for the software development team. Working with Software Development Managers, the TPM is responsible for ensuring that the software development team has clear functional direction and mitigates risks and blockers for the team. This role strives to initiate continuous improvement efforts by identifying inefficiencies and proposing new or improved solutions in products and processes.

No longer are we needing humans to walk around the warehouse, but we now need software developers to write programs for the robots.

Your chosen career field has now morphed. Instead of hiring armies of humans with human managers, your career field now focuses on armies of robots with software engineers.

Writing software is easy, you can do it. But your going to need to re-tool.

All the best.
JG

Advisor

Kathleen Dunn-Knudsen Brooklyn, NY

Hi Nate,

Thank you very much for your service and for using ACP AdvisorNet. Have you taken a look at our community page? On that section of the site you are able to search for and privately message Advisors in your area of interest. Our community page also lets you search for Advisors by company.

I did a quick search for Amazon and found five Advisors on the site that may be able to assist you. I'd encourage you to reach out to them privately and ask any questions you may have. The Amazon Advisors can be found here: https://acp-advisornet.org/community/company/Amazon

Thank you again for your service.

Best,
Kathleen
ACP AdvisorNet Staff

Advisor

Charles Bonilla Chicago, IL

Hi Nate,

You may wish to consider Walmart. There are currently two Area Manager opportunities: https://jobs.walmart.com/careerswithamission/jobs?lng=-116.75119&lat=39.25021&woe=8&page=1&location=Nevada

You may apply directly; or you may consider registering with the Veteran Talent Exchange Program and get assistance tailoring your resume to the Area Manager opportunity:
http://www.peoplescout.com/vte/

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