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I’ve had several questions about order selecting lately, I’ve been meaning to get to them, and a young job seeker wrote, I’ve pulled orders at 3 companies before so I have a lot of experience, but I’ve applied at this place offering XX dollars an hour and they say I don’t have the experience. It’s a lot of money and I want that job. So today let’s talk about all the different task recruiters are advertising for and maybe their using the wrong vocabulary with us.
I’m Marty, here on Warehouse and Operations as a Career! I can feel such frustration. We as job seekers have a set of skills and experiences, we’re looking at the job boards and job groups advertising for help and see that payrates can differ more than quite a bit and it just doesn’t make sense. Of course we want to apply at the highest rate! And the position of order selector, order picker, fulfillment associate, inventory picker, stock picker, warehouse picker, lets see, what’s some other things I’ve seen, oh here’s a good one, picking specialist. And the list can go on and on, only limited by the recruiter’s imagination. But all that fancy wording doesn’t help us. Very few ads give us much of a job description to go off of. I try and in terms of high productivity and low productivity. Let’s talk about a few different kinds of selection.
Let’s start out at a small piece assembly line or kitting operation. Things like a gas meter production plant or a telephone assembly facility. An order picker, or whatever they call it, may be responsible for walking a path or aisle and selecting small items like O-rings, washers, little springs and switches for the construction of gas meters, or, different components like ram boards, processors, sensors, cameras, speakers, microphones and antenna’s to build cell phones with. These are very important positions, and accuracy is important, many of the parts can look a lot alike. This selection process may be considered low productivity. Use of warehouse equipment isn’t necessary. We could be walking the bin area or carousel tower and placing those components in a container or tray bin, placing it on a conveyer or roller rack, grabbing another bin and order and starting the process over.
Another example of a low productivity selector would be at something like a produce distributor. Now here we may need experience with operating an electric pallet jack, maybe a walkie or a rider pallet jack. In this position we’ll be responsible for not just accuracy but quality as well. A produce order selector, picker, whatever you choose to call it, is going to occasionally open some boxes, check out the quality of the produce, not only identifying if the produce is good or bad but understand what’s acceptable for the customer its going to. Of course all customers deserve the absolute best produce available, however we’re dealing with a live product. Absolute best should have its own item number, but it still remains our responsibility to select it. I think we can all understand a 5 star Michelin restaurant is going to expect, and pay more for a strawberry than say a mom and pop diner type of restaurant. Maybe that one particular case just doesn’t have even a 2 day shelf life left on it so we’d decide to take it over to the shrink area and not select it for anyone.
These positions may pay a bit more than the parts assembly or kitting organization we spoke of earlier due to the equipment operation experience required and having to be trained and certified to operate it and the knowledge of produce needed but the productivity expectation will fall in that low category.
Oh, and one thing I just thought of, a selector position can be a low productivity task but could be more strenuous than others, think of something like tires, car or tractor tires or built equipment like gas meters and heavy electrical components like transformers and such. Not heavy enough for equipment usage but much heavier than say those picker bins we were speaking about earlier. These positions could pay more than the other two we discussed.
And speaking of equipment usage, we then have something called bulk selection, where we could be using a counterbalance forklift to retrieve orders of pallet quantities at a time. Of course, this position will pay more because of the equipment experience and certification needed, but also, depending on what industry we’re in could fall in the low to medium productivity range. If we’re moving heavy objects like home appliances such as washers, dryers, refrigerators or engine blocks and diesel truck parts or pallets containing cases of disposable paper plates, bowls, and cups.
And then we have what I consider one of the best, most lucrative, yet short term selector positions, the broadline food service distributor order selector. Many broadline distributors may house 6000 plus items, having at least that many pick facings. My previous facility travel distance within the dry side was just a few yards under 1 mile when hitting every aisle. These facilities will utilize the electric or hydrogen fuel cell powered double and even triple platform rider pallet jacks. These types of facilities may incorporate the newest and most efficient systems like AS/AR or Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems, the mini loads and carousels and very complex WMS products or warehouse management systems doing everything from inventory control, to order generation, selection paths to transportation routing and mapping of the loads. Shipping hundreds of thousands of cases each week. An order selector at such an organization may be expected to accurately select a couple of hundred cases per hour. And they are well paid, possibly earning double that plus of a lower productivity position like we discussed earlier. These selector positions will require at least 3 to 5 years electric rider pallet jack experience, along with rf or speech to text scanning experience, and quite honestly the type of work ethic as to come in, get the job done, and go home mentality! These high productivity positions can come with a pay by the piece selected component as well, which can further increase our earnings.
I got to rambling a bit, but you can see some of the different types of selection available in the warehouse a recruiter could be speaking of.
I’ve seen so many advertisements for those larger payrates and it frustrates me to no end. Any recruiters listening today, please add a little more information to your ad, maybe a job description and the type of industry. Otherwise, you could be wasting your time answering all our resumes that are not really qualified for the task and our time, and hopes, on getting a great paying job that we just don’t yet have the work experience or skills to be considered for the position.
Earning those big bucks is achievable for all of us. A selector position is a great job, and as we’ve just spoken to, can be a great career as well.
Another thing about any kind of selection is the growth potential. By learning the positions before the selection process, like unloading, stocking, and inventory, and those after selection like the shipping, transportation and delivery of the goods we’re increasing our value of knowledge. And knowledge and ability, mixed with a little more responsibility, will mean more pay every time!
Well, I have to get back to work myself now. I hope I have given you a little insight to order selection or whatever your recruiter calls it and why the pay levels can be so spread apart.
Thanks for checking in with us, maybe tell a friend about us, and please be safe in all you do.