Supply Chain is part of the activities for the provision of Humanitarian relief aid. The Humanitarian Supply Chain Management (HSCM) is a challenging area due to the unpredictable context in which it operates daily. This is something that makes Human Resources Management (HRM) application in the humanitarian context more difficult. As HRM contribute significantly in the development of competitive advantage for an organization, significant attention has to be paid to the management of its human capital, and mainly to its recruitment and selection, training and evaluation. Thus, the skills needed for an effective performance of its human capital need to be carefully explored.

By exploring the Human Resources Management and Supply Chain Management in the Humanitarian Sector, the scope of this dissertation is to study the hard and soft skills of the Humanitarian Supply Chain (HSC) professionals through a quantitative exploration of the opinions of professionals exclusively from the Humanitarian sector. Namely, the dissertation aims to explore a) which hard and soft skills are mostly required for the HSC professionals, b) which are the hard and soft skills that most HSC professionals are currently lacking, as well as c) the importance of each skill category.

The results indicate that soft skills are gaining advantage over hard skills; interpersonal and behavioral skills and technical skills related to warehousing seem to be preferred. The results indicate that when controlling for the job category there is a preference in soft skills (comparing to hard skills); the higher the ranking (e.g managers and supervisors) the more the soft skills are preferred over hard skills. This is also observed from more experienced professionals in Humanitarian sector and in the SCM in the Humanitarian sector, as well as, in organizations which operate for longer period of time.

The recruitment and selection process as well as the staff training, use a mix of hard and soft skills, but seem to focus mostly on the hard skills required for the HSC professionals. More specifically, for the recruitment and selection process, hard skills regarding warehouse management and soft skills regarding communication skills are mostly required. For the staff training, hard skills regarding warehouse management and order processing, and soft skills regarding organizational skills are mostly preferred. However, during the performance evaluation of the HSC professionals, soft skills are taken into consideration almost equally as hard skills.

The HSC professionals seem to lack in empathy, communication skills, time management and positive attitude in terms of soft skills, while the absence of degree/ certificate (or any other academic qualification) is common among them.