FlightWay / Careers / Purchasing Agents, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products

Business & Finance

Purchasing Agents, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products

Purchase machinery, equipment, tools, parts, supplies, or services necessary for the operation of an establishment.

Sector: Business & Finance
Preparation: Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed
O*NET code: 13-1023.00

What you'll actually do

The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.

Getting Information

central to the job — rated 90/100 for importance.
Communicating with People Outside the Organization

central to the job — rated 87/100 for importance.
Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates

central to the job — rated 86/100 for importance.
Working with Computers

a major part of the work — rated 83/100 for importance.
Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships

a major part of the work — rated 80/100 for importance.
Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work

a major part of the work — rated 79/100 for importance.

Purchase machinery, equipment, tools, parts, supplies, or services necessary for the operation of an establishment. Purchase raw or semifinished materials for manufacturing. May negotiate contracts.

What it takes

Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.

Skills

Negotiation

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
Reading Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
Active Listening

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Complex Problem Solving

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Speaking

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.

Knowledge

English Language

Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 89/100 for importance.
Law and Government

Needed at a high level (65/100), and rated 82/100 for importance.
Customer and Personal Service

Needed at expert level (79/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
Administration and Management

Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 76/100 for importance.

Abilities

Written Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
Oral Comprehension

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Oral Expression

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Written Expression

Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.

How people get in

O*NET places this occupation in Zone 4 — considerable preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.

Education

A four-year bachelor's degree is the usual entry ticket.

Experience

Two to four years of related work, internships or research on top of the degree.

Training

Most of the learning happens before you are hired, not after.

What it pays

These are typical finance compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Purchasing Agents, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.

Goldman · JP Morgan · KKR

$150k – $400k+

Regional Banks & Funds

$85k – $130k

Credit Unions & Local Firms

$55k – $85k

How the work tends to run

Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.

Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
Part of the job is other people’s output, not only your own.From “Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others”
Rules and standards are checkable and someone checks them.From “Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards”

How FlightWay scores your fit against this

No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.

1. You answer a short quiz: Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
2. We correlate the two profiles: Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Purchasing Agents, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
3. The number you see is personality fit only: "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
4. Every factor is visible: You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.

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Occupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.