Canada and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

[pic 1][pic 2][pic 3][pic 4]

Contents

Introduction        2

Employer Branding        5

The Recruitment Process        6

Internal and External Recruitment        8

Diversification        9

Conclusion        11

Reference List        12

Introduction

There are five big banks in Canada and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) is one of them. The rest of the five big banks respectively are Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) and Bank of Montreal (BMO). Being one of the five big banks in Canada, CIBC serves more than eleven million clients with many kinds of financial services and products around the world. Additionally, being one of the most successful and influential banks in the world, CIBC has its own strategy. Specifically, “CIBC aspires to be a strong, innovative, relationship-oriented bank. Our client-focused strategy is designed to make banking easy, flexible and personalized for our clients” (“CIBC Quick Facts,” n.d.).

         In fact, CIBC is created through the combination of two banks – Canadian Bank of Commerce formed in 1867 and Imperial Bank of Canada opened in 1875. These two banks merged in 1961 to form a bank that is now known as the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). Since the establishment of CIBC, it has always been trying to improve convenience for their clients. For example, CIBC was the first bank to use 24-hour cash dispensers in Canada in 1969. Also, the bank added a drive-in automated teller and a passbook-updating machine which greatly improved the convenience for people during the 1980s. (CIBC Timeline,” n.d.).

For a successful organization, having specific vision and value are critical. These characteristics could have either a positive or negative impact on an organization. For CIBC, one of the most important reasons why it is successful and influential all over the world is that it has the proper vision and value. CIBC’s vision is to be the leader in client relationship and their values are trust, teamwork and accountability (“Visions and Value,” n.d.). Since an organization’s culture is based on the value that it establishes and the organizational culture determines its success and failure. It is reasonable to argue that CIBC’s success today is greatly associated with its the vision and values.

CIBC has three main business units: retail and business banking, wealth management, and capital markets; each of them has its own respective functions. Retail and business banking provides their clients with financial advice, services, and products. Wealth management offers investment solutions to meet the needs of institutional, retail, and high net worth clients. Capital Markets serve its customers with integrated credit, global markets products, and research to corporate government and clients around the world (“CIBC Quick Facts,” n.d.).        

It is critical for any organization to have a decent analysis about themselves, and the best way to do so is by doing a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis evaluates a company both internally and externally through its strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threat. Internally, CIBC’s biggest strength is the number of employees they have. It has over 40,000 employees worldwide, with more employees, CIBC is able to serve more customers without lowering the quality and efficiency of its service. This is one of the reasons why Bloomberg Markets Magazine named CIBC the strongest bank in Canada and North America (“The Strength of CIBC,” n.d.). On the other hand, CIBC’s main weakness is the lack of presence in emerging countries, due to the fact that it increases negative financial influence by reason of events that affect the Canadian economy (“Company Profile - Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce,” 2013). Externally, CIBC has a lot of great opportunities at the moment. In recent years, the economy is rapidly growing in the developing countries and it is an excellent chance now for CIBC to enter into those countries. Although CIBC plays an influential role in Canada, it does faces a few threats. One of the threats is the competition with other banks, especially the other four great banks in Canada. Also, the demand for financial services of CIBC could be affected by the poor economic prospect because a deceleration in global demand due to a likely recession in Europe negatively impact Canada’s economy (“Company Profile - Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce,” 2013). One of the ways that CIBC can do to keep its strengths, seize its opportunities, overcome its weaknesses, and eliminate its threats is to utilize the talent of its employees; and the best way to generate more competitive employees is through effective recruitment. There are four major topics associated with the idea of recruitment: employer branding, the recruitment process, internal and external recruitment, and Workforce Diversity; they are going to be analyzed in details in the subsequent sections.

Employer Branding

Every company is in need of great individuals to help them grow, but not all companies have what it takes to attract those individuals. The only way to make a large pool of potential talents willing to work for you is through employer branding. Before we examine more details about employer branding, we need to give it a proper definition first. Employer branding refers to the image, reputation, and value proposition of an organization as an employer (Mosley, 2015). By developing an effective brand as an employer, a company can attract better and more qualified applicants. (“Employer Branding,” 2016). But how will an employer create a positive brand? Well, there are many ways to accomplish this task and CIBC is doing a great job in presenting their image to attract employees.

First of all, CIBC has a clearly defined target audience, the Generation Y. It exclusively offers special programs such as tuition assistance, paid internship, and career development through corporate websites, school job postings, and social media to attract young talents (Tierney, n.d.). These programs have helped CIBC in achieving its recruitment goals and granted CIBC the title of Canada’s Top Employers for Young People (“Corporate news,” 2016).

In addition, Mosley (2015) argues that the reputation with the customer experience is increasingly important in shaping the employer brand. The customer experience here has many meanings. It can be the experience of how employees greet a customer or how a Human Resources personnel treats a job applicant. These experiences depict a great picture for the potential employees to see what it is like to work for this company. In the case of CIBC, it has a customer-oriented culture that dedicated in offering the best service possible to every customer (“Our service commitment to you,” 2016). Furthermore, according to interview feedbacks from CIBC candidates, the word “friendly” and “supportive” are most frequently used to describe the interviewer (“CIBC customer service representative interview questions,” 2016).