In the fall of 2009, founder and CEO Gab Goncalves has turned PeopleAnswers, Inc. from a fledgling startup to a steadily growing company of nearly 50 employees and $10 million recurring revenue. PeopleAnswers provides people analytics software which its clients use to screen job candidates, matching potential hires to the characteristics of existing top performers. After seven years of growth, the firm is still being run by its founding team, and Goncalves worries whether the business can continue to scale. The case takes place at a moment when Goncalves is about to interview a seasoned sales executive from SAP (a major enterprise software company) to be VP of Sales, and explores strategic human resource management problems for a growing firm. Goncalves has to confront three questions: (i) Does he need to hire? (ii) What should he be looking for? (iii) How can he convince a good candidate to take the job? All three questions may hinge on the firm's broader strategy. A companion (B) case reveals what happened next, and revisits the questions of the case a few years later, at a new crossroads.
In the fall of 2009, founder and CEO Gab Goncalves has turned PeopleAnswers, Inc. from a fledgling startup to a steadily growing company of nearly 50 employees and $10 million recurring revenue. PeopleAnswers provides people analytics software which its clients use to screen job candidates, matching potential hires to the characteristics of existing top performers. After seven years of growth, the firm is still being run by its founding team, and Goncalves worries whether the business can continue to scale. The case takes place at a moment when Goncalves is about to interview a seasoned sales executive from SAP (a major enterprise software company) to be VP of Sales, and explores strategic human resource management problems for a growing firm. Goncalves has to confront three questions: (i) Does he need to hire? (ii) What should he be looking for? (iii) How can he convince a good candidate to take the job? All three questions may hinge on the firm's broader strategy. A companion (B) case reveals what happened next, and revisits the questions of the case a few years later, at a new crossroads.
By the 1930s, AT&T dominated the American phone industry, serving 10 million telephones and employing over 100,000 switchboard operators. But beginning in the mid-1910s, the company began changing from manually-operated switchboards to mechanical switching systems that were faster and more cost-effective and did not require human operators. By the 1930s, the changeover has been completed or is underway in most American cities with over 50,000 people. The rollout of the new technology is garnering a good deal of public attention, not just for the unfamiliar new "dialing" process that customers are required to learn, but also because of the mass layoffs of the women who served as operators. The job cuts have even resulted in reports from the Department of Labor and Congressional hearings. As the rollouts continue across the country, AT&T questions how to handle the layoffs and the reaction to the new system.
In September 2014, Tom Montgomery (SVP of strategic initiatives at the De Beers Group) and his team launched a pilot program in the United States to explore the $1 billion diamond market for pre-owned (recycled) diamonds. According to Montgomery, the motivation for the pilot program was to improve the consumer reselling experience and to enhance "diamond equity". Somewhat paradoxically, consumers typically received very low prices when they tried to sell diamonds (5-20% of the original retail price) leaving them reluctant to purchase diamonds in the future and making them into ambassadors of ill will. At a meeting scheduled for November 2015, the De Beers Executive Committee would have to decide whether to end the pilot program, extend it for another year to gather more information, or convert it into a new standalone business unit. Because De Beers had historically focused on producing rough diamonds (the "upstream" business), yet the new business unit offered an opportunity to enter and enhance the market for polished diamonds (the "downstream" business), the decision was particularly noteworthy.
In September 2014, Tom Montgomery (SVP of strategic initiatives at the De Beers Group) and his team launched a pilot program in the United States to explore the $1 billion diamond market for pre-owned (recycled) diamonds. According to Montgomery, the motivation for the pilot program was to improve the consumer reselling experience and to enhance "diamond equity". Somewhat paradoxically, consumers typically received very low prices when they tried to sell diamonds (5-20% of the original retail price) leaving them reluctant to purchase diamonds in the future and making them into ambassadors of ill will. At a meeting scheduled for November 2015, the De Beers Executive Committee would have to decide whether to end the pilot program, extend it for another year to gather more information, or convert it into a new standalone business unit. Because De Beers had historically focused on producing rough diamonds (the "upstream" business), yet the new business unit offered an opportunity to enter and enhance the market for polished diamonds (the "downstream" business), the decision was particularly noteworthy.