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At the Center for Supply Chain Excellence Roundtable, one of the events centered on a panel of five FSB alumni discussing an increasingly-common idea in business – the rotational development program. RDPs are structured programs that allow new employees to participate in different positions in multiple business functions of a company within their first couple of years on the job.

“It definitely was not my intention to go into a rotational program. Honestly, I just wasn't ready to stop learning and the nature of kind of rotating around, seeing a few different things before I settled into a role really kind of appealed to me,”  '13, supply chain manager at Swagelok, said.

“I went through four different rotations. I did buying in the laundry category, I did site merchandising in baby hard lines. Same thing with replenishment in that category. Did some business analytics and planning work in pets,” Diana Chudnovsky '23, rotational merchant at Walmart, said. “They were all within consumables, all staying within Bentonville. It helped me to understand what merchandising is from the whole well-rounded perspective.”

“One thing I like about Parker Hannifin’s rotational program is that there's locations all across the country. So my first rotation was 30 minutes outside of Chicago, where I focused on production planning and scheduling. And then my second location, where I'm currently at, is in Roanoke Park, California, which is about an hour north of San Francisco. There I'm focusing on procurement, sourcing, service, and logistics,”  '22, supply chain LDA at Parker Hannifin, said.

The panelists said that one of the keys to success in a rotational development program is the ability to adapt quickly in a variety of ways.

“The first 30 days, I had a lot of imposter syndrome at the company, thinking ‘I'm not supposed to be here,’ or ‘Why did they just hire me?’ But honestly, they picked you for a reason,”  '21, business systems analyst at Trimble, said. “My mentor told me to learn to fail fast. You'll make mistakes. Learn from them, learn what you did wrong and how to fix it, and then just move on to the next one.”

“I think you need to be able to work and think on your own. There will be a lot of opportunity to prove yourself. You'll be given a project or a task or responsibility, your managers are really looking for you to own that and do really well at it,”  '21, sourcing manager at Weber, said. “It's okay to ask questions. It's okay to reach out to people until you build your network, working with different team members, asking different questions if you don't know the answer, but taking ownership over something and then seeing it to completion, I think is really important.”

“You're in a really unique position in a rotational program to have the vast majority of your job revolving around learning. So asking questions, coming in curious and excited about what you're doing, and making yourself not only an asset to the team, but also somebody that people really like to work with, like to answer questions for, and know you’ll be able to do something with that information,” Chudnovsky said.

“You’ll have to become comfortable going through rotations where you are not the expert. You're dealing with people on a day in and day out basis that might have been doing this job longer than you've been alive, so just getting comfortable asking people questions,” Wise said. “Can you stay humble enough to be honest with yourself, be transparent with everybody, smart enough to pick it up? And are you hungry enough to keep going after things? And I think that is a testament to what a leadership or career development program is.”

Hernandez admitted that the different locations for her RDP weren’t an easy change. “At first it was very difficult, just because it was the first time I was moving outside of Ohio, but I was quickly able to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, not only at work, but in the community around me,” she said. “But there are people out there that are in the same position as you, and they're all experiencing the same thing, and they're all very welcoming. I would say getting out there and getting to know new people really does help.”

“I think it's really important to find hobbies and passions and just meet people. I think it's very easy to kind of get stuck in the nine to five grind, or just want to go home, sit down and rot on the couch,” Kim said. “And that's perfectly fine some days, but I feel like you'll grow a lot more as a person if you just get out and get into the community, do volunteer work, join sports and just meet other young, like-minded folks, and you'll just be a lot happier.”

Panelists said that what happens when the rotation is complete varies.

“The business weighed our own personal interests, where we enjoyed being, but also where there was a business need. The managers affectionately referred to it as the NBA Draft,” Kimbrell said. “We had different managers that would reach out to us with opportunities on their teams, knowing that we were coming towards the end.”

“You submit a form on what position you want to focus on. And then from there, they submit your interest in that position to all the other divisions. The division can put in an offer for you, and you then get presented with all your offers,” Hernandez said. “From there you get to interview them, rather than them interviewing you, based on the position and responsibility that you'll be working on, and then you submit your final placement.”

“My last rotation was data analytics, serving the operations umbrella. And I really learned to love that,” Kim said. “So I started the conversation with the program manager of the rotational development program, and we worked something out where, at the end of six months, I would just continue working on that team, start getting more leadership in the team, and start leading larger projects. So it kind of just seamlessly transitioned into a final placement for me.”

The panel finished with advice for students heading out into their first jobs after graduation.

“Become a sponge. Soak up all the information,” Hernandez said.

“Learn how to read a profit and loss statement. I didn't do that at first, and now I'm running hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of things. So it's really, really important to know how your decisions are impacting the business,” Chudnovsky said.

“I think your network is extremely important. So as you go into each role, meet as many people as you can, understand what function they do and what their job is like, and then eventually it'll help you down the road,” Kimbrell said.

“Stay curious, stay open minded, and don't be afraid to ask why the company does something a certain way,” Kim said.

“Never stop learning. Whether that's from people, whether that's from your processes in the business, or just from a family perspective, your life's going to constantly evolve,” Wise said.