How To Do A SWOT Analysis For Business And Career Growth In 2024

A detailed SWOT analysis can help you adequately prepare for your career future and business … [+] prospects

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When it comes to making critical career and business decisions, especially around this time of the year, conducting a SWOT analysis is one of the best approaches to use. SWOT, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, is a structured framework commonly associated with strategic business planning, and is a fundamental tool for maintaining competitive advantage and alignment of goals.

Although commonly thought of in the context of business, the SWOT analysis is an important tool to use for ongoing career progression, regardless of one’s career goals. Below we will explore essential elements of a SWOT analysis and how this can be applied not only to business growth, but to accelerate your career development and enable you to achieve your professional goals.

What Are The Elements Of A SWOT Analysis?

It’s important to remember that the first two elements of a SWOT analysis, the S and W which represents strengths and weaknesses, refer to internal factors within your immediate control; while the O and T, which are your opportunities and threats, refer to factors outside of your control—external factors. All of these have a critical bearing on the success of your business and career goals.

Strengths

Your strengths are what enable you or your organization to have a competitive advantage. If designing a project proposal for your organization, you could ask yourself, What unique areas of added value does my team or organization have that our competitors are lacking in? What are our financial resources? What’s our capacity for taking on this project? How loyal is our customer base? What strategic partnerships can we tap into?

When applying the SWOT analysis within the context of your personal and professional growth and considering where you want to be in your career in the next year, ask yourself: What unique achievements or career accomplishments do I have? How many industries have I been exposed to throughout my working life and what are the unique perspectives that I can bring from these industries to apply to my next role? What professional development certificates or courses have I completed? How has a business or project been transformed (in numerical proof) through me working on its delivery or management? What global perspectives can I bring to the table, to enable my company or prospective employer to tap into new markets? What strategic alliances could I forge in my company due to the quality of my professional network and the connections I have made over time?

Your strengths and weaknesses provide indicators for areas you should double down on, and areas you … [+] need to improve

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Weaknesses

Your weaknesses are the elements that place you or your company at a disadvantage to your market and to your competitors. For example, a weakness could be that your department lacks sufficient financial resources. To define your organizational weaknesses you could ask yourself questions such as, What vulnerabilities do we face in our team culture or in management? How responsive are we to change? Is there a high employee turnover rate? Are we being inefficient with our processes?

When evaluating your own career and professional goals you could ask yourself questions such as, What are my knowledge or skills gaps? What feedback have I received from my manager and colleagues on my team? How limited are my financial resources for ongoing training?

Opportunities

As mentioned earlier, opportunities, are purely external factors that you and your organization can capitalize on and leverage for growth. Some good examples of an opportunity for your organization would be a gap in the market, emerging trends, and new technology such as artificial intelligence. For instance, you could ask, What opportunities do we have for cost savings or for revenue growth? How is our market demographic changing? What new strategic partnerships could enhance our capabilities?

A good question to ask yourself when considering career opportunities would be, What is the current status of the labor market in my region and within my desired industry, and how has it changed over the past year? You could even ask, How can I leverage AI to improve my career skills?

Threats

The final element of a SWOT analysis is threats, which come in the form of challenges or risks, which if not addressed, can turn into present issues that destroy positive outcomes. Some of the emerging threats that we are seeing affecting organizations today include inflation and the cost of living crisis, global employee workplace trends such as quiet quitting and the great resignation, and cybersecurity risks. Monitoring trends as they are rapidly progressing and conducting regular research is essential so that you can remain flexible and agile in your approach, and not respond too late. For example you could ask, What regulatory changes could impact our work? What threats do we face from key competitors?

In your career, you might consider conducting an introspection into what external circumstances such as moving location, significant life change such as starting a family, your health, a layoff, or AI automating your job, could impact your career goals.

Use your SWOT to define your competitive edge

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Now that you have these four elements in place, you are in the best position to analyze and appropriately plan for the success of your department, project, team, or whatever area of the business you are responsible for. You will also be better equipped to future-proof your career against potential obstacles and present yourself as the best candidate for your desired job, uniquely positioning yourself as a star candidate in a competitive labor pool, and as a robust thought leader.