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 - – technology disruption, competitive advantages are harder to sustain because of technology dispersion, geopolitical disruptions, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing commodity prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, wage bills are increasing,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing household debt because of falling income levels, 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 -
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.
Analytics focus
– Candidate Recruitment is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Sandra Jeanquart Miles, Randy McCamey can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Candidate Recruitment in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
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.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Candidate Recruitment is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Candidate Recruitment are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Strong track record of project management
– Candidate Recruitment is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
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 -
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Candidate Recruitment 's lucrative customers.
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.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Candidate Recruitment is planning to shift buying processes online.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand?, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Organizational Development strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
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.
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.
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.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand?, in the dynamic environment Candidate Recruitment has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Candidate Recruitment has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Candidate Recruitment has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? HBR case study mentions - Candidate Recruitment takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
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.
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 -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Candidate Recruitment is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand? case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
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.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Candidate Recruitment can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, The Candidate Experience: Is it Damaging Your Employer Brand?, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
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.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Candidate Recruitment to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
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.
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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Organizational Development industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Candidate Recruitment can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Candidate Recruitment can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
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.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Candidate Recruitment can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Candidate Recruitment to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
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 -
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.
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 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? .
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.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Candidate Recruitment business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
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.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Candidate Recruitment in the Organizational Development sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
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.
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.
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.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
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 .
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
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.
