I am reproducing an articlle on SWOT analysis. sent to me recently by a friend.
Personal SWOT Analysis For Career Change
By <link outdated-removed> ( Search On Cite | Search On Google )
A personal SWOT analysis is a powerful technique that can be used when seeking a career change (or indeed any other personal change in your life). Linked to a strong and powerful goal, it can enable you to take advantage of your skills, talents and abilities to take your career to the next level.
SWOT stands for:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
Completing a SWOT Analysis
To complete a SWOT analysis, take a large piece of paper and divide the paper into four quadrants and label each area as above. Look at each area and consider the questions that follow and write down the answers that come into your head.
Strengths
Personal strengths form an innate part of who you are and your characteristics. Consider your strengths as you see them and talk to your colleagues and friends for a further source of support.
What skills and capabilities do you have?
In what areas do you excel?
What qualifications, accreditations or experience make you unique?
What would other people consider to be your strengths?
What qualities, values or beliefs make you stand out from others?
Weaknesses
Consider your personal weaknesses and how you may be seen by others. It is important to list any areas you feel may be holding you back.
What are the gaps in your capabilities and what skills do you need to develop?
In what areas could you improve?
What would other people consider to be your weaknesses?
What personal difficulties do you need to overcome to reach your goal?
Opportunities
Opportunities are normally external and may relate to changes in technology, people that may influence decisions, or training, development or support that may support your aspirations.
What opportunities are available to you?
What external influences can help you to achieve success?
Who could support you to help you achieve your goal?
Threats
Threats are also normally external and are the things that get in the way of your success.
What obstacles are you facing?
What external influences may hinder your success?
Who or what could get in the way of you achieving your goal?
The next step
Carrying out a personal SWOT analysis can help you to understand yourself and support the decisions you make. It will highlight areas you may not have considered before and may help you to realise a different perspective in each area.
It gives you a foundation from where you can move forward with your goal to support your career change and for you to take action. There are various ways in which you can do this.
You can review your strengths, and ensure these are reflected on your curriculum vitae or letter to a prospective employer. You can consider ways to address any weaknesses which you want to overcome or develop your skills and capabilities.
You can review your opportunities as these can be used to your advantage. Also consider how your threats could be minimised or eliminated.
These actions will enable you to take clear steps towards achieving your goal.
Copyright Karen Williams 2007. All Rights Reserved
Karen Williams is a Life and Career Development Coach and runs her own coaching practice, Self Discovery Coaching. She has over ten years experience of working in Human Resources, training, coaching and management roles and is a Chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
From India, Delhi
1Personal SWOT Analysis For Career Change
By <link outdated-removed> ( Search On Cite | Search On Google )
A personal SWOT analysis is a powerful technique that can be used when seeking a career change (or indeed any other personal change in your life). Linked to a strong and powerful goal, it can enable you to take advantage of your skills, talents and abilities to take your career to the next level.
SWOT stands for:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
Completing a SWOT Analysis
To complete a SWOT analysis, take a large piece of paper and divide the paper into four quadrants and label each area as above. Look at each area and consider the questions that follow and write down the answers that come into your head.
Strengths
Personal strengths form an innate part of who you are and your characteristics. Consider your strengths as you see them and talk to your colleagues and friends for a further source of support.
What skills and capabilities do you have?
In what areas do you excel?
What qualifications, accreditations or experience make you unique?
What would other people consider to be your strengths?
What qualities, values or beliefs make you stand out from others?
Weaknesses
Consider your personal weaknesses and how you may be seen by others. It is important to list any areas you feel may be holding you back.
What are the gaps in your capabilities and what skills do you need to develop?
In what areas could you improve?
What would other people consider to be your weaknesses?
What personal difficulties do you need to overcome to reach your goal?
Opportunities
Opportunities are normally external and may relate to changes in technology, people that may influence decisions, or training, development or support that may support your aspirations.
What opportunities are available to you?
What external influences can help you to achieve success?
Who could support you to help you achieve your goal?
Threats
Threats are also normally external and are the things that get in the way of your success.
What obstacles are you facing?
What external influences may hinder your success?
Who or what could get in the way of you achieving your goal?
The next step
Carrying out a personal SWOT analysis can help you to understand yourself and support the decisions you make. It will highlight areas you may not have considered before and may help you to realise a different perspective in each area.
It gives you a foundation from where you can move forward with your goal to support your career change and for you to take action. There are various ways in which you can do this.
You can review your strengths, and ensure these are reflected on your curriculum vitae or letter to a prospective employer. You can consider ways to address any weaknesses which you want to overcome or develop your skills and capabilities.
You can review your opportunities as these can be used to your advantage. Also consider how your threats could be minimised or eliminated.
These actions will enable you to take clear steps towards achieving your goal.
Copyright Karen Williams 2007. All Rights Reserved
Karen Williams is a Life and Career Development Coach and runs her own coaching practice, Self Discovery Coaching. She has over ten years experience of working in Human Resources, training, coaching and management roles and is a Chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
From India, Delhi
To add on to what Mr.Anurag has sent.....This would be my piece of information..
Hope it is useful....
What is SWOT Analysis?
SWOT analysis is a basic, straightforward model that provides direction and serves as a basis for the development of marketing plans. It accomplishes this by assessing an organizations strengths (what an organization can do) and weaknesses (what an organization cannot do) in addition to opportunities (potential favorable conditions for an organization) and threats (potential unfavorable conditions for an organization). SWOT analysis is an important step in planning and its value is often underestimated despite the simplicity in creation. The role of SWOT analysis is to take the information from the environmental analysis and separate it into internal issues (strengths and weaknesses) and external issues (opportunities and threats). Once this is completed, SWOT analysis determines if the information indicates something that will assist the firm in accomplishing its objectives (a strength or opportunity), or if it indicates an obstacle that must be overcome or minimized to achieve desired results (weakness or threat) (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
Elements of SWOT Analysis
Strengths and Weaknesses
Relative to market needs and competitors’ characteristics, a manager must begin to think in terms of what the firm can do well and where it may have deficiencies. Strengths and weaknesses exist internally within a firm, or in key relationships between the firm and its customers. SWOT analysis must be customer focused to gain maximum benefit, a strength is really meaningful only when it is useful in satisfying the needs of a customer. At this point, the strength becomes a capability (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
When writing down strengths, it is imperative that they be considered from both the view of the firm as well as from the customers that are dealt with. These strengths should be realistic and not modest. A well-developed listing of strengths should be able to answer a couple of questions. What are the firm’s advantages? What does the firm do well (PMI, 1999)?
A customer-focused SWOT may also uncover a firm’s potential weaknesses. Although some weaknesses may be harmless, those that relate to specific customer needs should be minimized if at all possible. In addition, a focus on a firm’s strengths in advertising is promotion is important to increase awareness in areas that a firm excels in. This method not only evokes a positive response within the minds of the consumer, but pushes the weaknesses further from the decision making process (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
Weaknesses should also be considered from an internal and external viewpoint. It is important that listing of a firm’s weaknesses is truthful so that they may be overcome as quickly as possible. Delaying the discovery of weaknesses that already exist within a company will only further hurt the firm. A well-developed listing of weaknesses should be able to answer a few questions. What can be improved? What is done poorly? What should be avoided.
The role of the internal portion of SWOT is to determine where resources are available or lacking so that strengths and weaknesses can be identified. From this, the marketing manager can then develop marketing strategies that match these strengths with opportunities and thereby create new capabilities, which will then be part of subsequent SWOT analysis. At the same time, the manager can develop strategies to overcome the firm’s weaknesses, or find ways to minimize the negative effects of these weaknesses
Opportunities and Threats
Managers who are caught up in developing strengths and capabilities may ignore the external environment. A mistake of this magnitude could lead to an efficient organization that is no longer effective when changes in the external environment prohibit the firm’s ability to deliver value to its targeted customer segments. These changes can occur in the rate of overall market growth and in the competitive, economic, political/legal, technological, or sociocultural environments (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
Conclusion
It is not simply enough to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a company. In applying the SWOT analysis it is necessary to minimize or avoid both weaknesses and threats. Weaknesses should be looked at in order to convert them into strengths. Likewise, threats should be converted into opportunities. Lastly, strengths and opportunities should be matched to optimize the potential of a firm. Applying SWOT in this fashion can obtain leverage for a company (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
As can be seen, SWOT analysis can be extremely beneficial to those who objectively analyze their company. The marketing manager should have rough outline of potential marketing activities that can be used to take advantage of capabilities and convert weaknesses and threats. However, at this stage, there will likely be many potential directions for the managers to pursue. Due to the limited resources that most firms have, it is difficult to accomplish everything at once. The manager must prioritize all marketing activities and develop specific goals and objectives for the marketing plan
Kulshum
From India, Coimbatore
Hope it is useful....
What is SWOT Analysis?
SWOT analysis is a basic, straightforward model that provides direction and serves as a basis for the development of marketing plans. It accomplishes this by assessing an organizations strengths (what an organization can do) and weaknesses (what an organization cannot do) in addition to opportunities (potential favorable conditions for an organization) and threats (potential unfavorable conditions for an organization). SWOT analysis is an important step in planning and its value is often underestimated despite the simplicity in creation. The role of SWOT analysis is to take the information from the environmental analysis and separate it into internal issues (strengths and weaknesses) and external issues (opportunities and threats). Once this is completed, SWOT analysis determines if the information indicates something that will assist the firm in accomplishing its objectives (a strength or opportunity), or if it indicates an obstacle that must be overcome or minimized to achieve desired results (weakness or threat) (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
Elements of SWOT Analysis
Strengths and Weaknesses
Relative to market needs and competitors’ characteristics, a manager must begin to think in terms of what the firm can do well and where it may have deficiencies. Strengths and weaknesses exist internally within a firm, or in key relationships between the firm and its customers. SWOT analysis must be customer focused to gain maximum benefit, a strength is really meaningful only when it is useful in satisfying the needs of a customer. At this point, the strength becomes a capability (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
When writing down strengths, it is imperative that they be considered from both the view of the firm as well as from the customers that are dealt with. These strengths should be realistic and not modest. A well-developed listing of strengths should be able to answer a couple of questions. What are the firm’s advantages? What does the firm do well (PMI, 1999)?
A customer-focused SWOT may also uncover a firm’s potential weaknesses. Although some weaknesses may be harmless, those that relate to specific customer needs should be minimized if at all possible. In addition, a focus on a firm’s strengths in advertising is promotion is important to increase awareness in areas that a firm excels in. This method not only evokes a positive response within the minds of the consumer, but pushes the weaknesses further from the decision making process (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
Weaknesses should also be considered from an internal and external viewpoint. It is important that listing of a firm’s weaknesses is truthful so that they may be overcome as quickly as possible. Delaying the discovery of weaknesses that already exist within a company will only further hurt the firm. A well-developed listing of weaknesses should be able to answer a few questions. What can be improved? What is done poorly? What should be avoided.
The role of the internal portion of SWOT is to determine where resources are available or lacking so that strengths and weaknesses can be identified. From this, the marketing manager can then develop marketing strategies that match these strengths with opportunities and thereby create new capabilities, which will then be part of subsequent SWOT analysis. At the same time, the manager can develop strategies to overcome the firm’s weaknesses, or find ways to minimize the negative effects of these weaknesses
Opportunities and Threats
Managers who are caught up in developing strengths and capabilities may ignore the external environment. A mistake of this magnitude could lead to an efficient organization that is no longer effective when changes in the external environment prohibit the firm’s ability to deliver value to its targeted customer segments. These changes can occur in the rate of overall market growth and in the competitive, economic, political/legal, technological, or sociocultural environments (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
Conclusion
It is not simply enough to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a company. In applying the SWOT analysis it is necessary to minimize or avoid both weaknesses and threats. Weaknesses should be looked at in order to convert them into strengths. Likewise, threats should be converted into opportunities. Lastly, strengths and opportunities should be matched to optimize the potential of a firm. Applying SWOT in this fashion can obtain leverage for a company (Marketing Strategy, 1998).
As can be seen, SWOT analysis can be extremely beneficial to those who objectively analyze their company. The marketing manager should have rough outline of potential marketing activities that can be used to take advantage of capabilities and convert weaknesses and threats. However, at this stage, there will likely be many potential directions for the managers to pursue. Due to the limited resources that most firms have, it is difficult to accomplish everything at once. The manager must prioritize all marketing activities and develop specific goals and objectives for the marketing plan
Kulshum
From India, Coimbatore
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