The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Organizational Development
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand?
The importance of the candidate experience has only recently gained attention as the war for talent ensues. Despite its importance, there is a paucity of research examining the exchange relationship between the job candidate and the organization during the recruitment process. This article presents a model-illustrating the connections and exchanges made among an organization, the job candidate, and the organization's recruitment process-that forms the candidate experience and, in turn, affects the employers' brand either positively or negatively. Based on this framework, guidelines are presented to assist organizations in ensuring a positive candidate experience that will result in the strengthening of the employer brand and improving recruitment and business outcomes. Some of these business outcomes include strengthening relationships with customers and investors, referring friends to the company, and participating in future searches conducted by the organization.
Swot Analysis of "The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand?" written by Sandra Jeanquart Miles, Randy McCamey includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Candidate Recruitment facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Strategy, Talent management and Organizational Development.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? casestudy better are - – banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, increasing energy prices, geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, increasing commodity prices,
increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Candidate Recruitment, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Candidate Recruitment operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Candidate Recruitment
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Organizational Development field.
4. Making a Organizational Development topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Candidate Recruitment
Strengths The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Candidate Recruitment in The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? Harvard Business Review case study are -
High brand equity
– Candidate Recruitment has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Candidate Recruitment to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Organizational Resilience of Candidate Recruitment
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Candidate Recruitment does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Training and development
– Candidate Recruitment has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Candidate Recruitment in the sector have low bargaining power. The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Candidate Recruitment to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to lead change in Organizational Development field
– Candidate Recruitment is one of the leading players in its industry. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in its segment but also across the whole industry. The ability to lead change has enabled Candidate Recruitment in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Candidate Recruitment has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Candidate Recruitment has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Diverse revenue streams
– Candidate Recruitment is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Organizational Development industry
– The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Candidate Recruitment to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Organizational Development industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Candidate Recruitment to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Innovation driven organization
– Candidate Recruitment is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Learning organization
- Candidate Recruitment is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Candidate Recruitment is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Candidate Recruitment has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Weaknesses The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Candidate Recruitment, firm in the HBR case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Candidate Recruitment is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Organizational Development segment. Candidate Recruitment needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Candidate Recruitment to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Candidate Recruitment has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Candidate Recruitment even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Candidate Recruitment is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Candidate Recruitment has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Candidate Recruitment has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Candidate Recruitment has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand?, is just above the industry average. Candidate Recruitment needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Need for greater diversity
– Candidate Recruitment has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Lack of clear differentiation of Candidate Recruitment products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Candidate Recruitment needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Candidate Recruitment supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand?, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Candidate Recruitment vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Opportunities The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Candidate Recruitment to increase its market reach. Candidate Recruitment will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Candidate Recruitment has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Candidate Recruitment to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? case study. Candidate Recruitment can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Candidate Recruitment can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Candidate Recruitment has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Candidate Recruitment to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Candidate Recruitment in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Organizational Development segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Buying journey improvements
– Candidate Recruitment can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Loyalty marketing
– Candidate Recruitment has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Candidate Recruitment can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Candidate Recruitment can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Organizational Development segment.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Candidate Recruitment can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Candidate Recruitment operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Organizational Development sector.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Candidate Recruitment in the consumer business. Now Candidate Recruitment can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Manufacturing automation
– Candidate Recruitment can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Organizational Development segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Candidate Recruitment to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Candidate Recruitment to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Threats The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? are -
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Candidate Recruitment needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Organizational Development industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Candidate Recruitment will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Candidate Recruitment can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? .
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Candidate Recruitment has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Organizational Development industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Candidate Recruitment needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Organizational Development sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Environmental challenges
– Candidate Recruitment needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Candidate Recruitment can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Organizational Development industry.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Candidate Recruitment with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Candidate Recruitment high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Organizational Development field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Candidate Recruitment can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing wage structure of Candidate Recruitment
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Candidate Recruitment.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Candidate Recruitment.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Candidate Recruitment can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Candidate Recruitment is facing in Organizational Development sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand?, Candidate Recruitment may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Organizational Development .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Candidate Recruitment needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.