How Cariad Used Osterus to Avoid the Deadly Traps of Acqui-hiring

This is the story of how Cariad, a company of the Volkwagen family, solved the challenge of complex workforce analysis. On top of that, they’ve taken the necessary steps needed to complete the demanding process of acqui-hiring, analyzing several companies and understanding the organization — whether the people have the right skills and work experience to be considered for an acquisition. Let’s take a deep dive into how they’ve accomplished this amazing endeavor.

With the help of Osterus, any benchmarking or comparison of the competitors’ workforces becomes a smooth and easy process. This is precisely what a European automotive company wanted to use Osterus for. Furthermore, our technology was utilized to assess the human capital component of a variety of relevant companies for Cariad. As a result, Cariad was able to benchmark them across their industry and share insights into cost structures and cultural factors.

By analyzing the workforce of one of their potential competitors, they successfully isolated similarities and differences the company had in terms of human capital. Such data analysis can be used to inform the strategic development of the company or any merger or acquisition decisions. It goes without saying that one of the quickest ways to acquire the talent or competencies you want is to merge or buy up a competitor — but deciding on which to buy can be difficult.

In this instance, we shall focus on ‘Company A’ as a reference. We take an in-depth look at workforce analytics based on the custom requirements of Cariad.

What is Company A’s Employee Makeup?

Company A is a software company in the automotive industry, so it’s not a surprise that the vast majority of their employees are IT engineers. As Company A is a part of Volkswagen group it’s again unsurprising that the majority of employees have held previous positions at Volkswagen. Following VW, there are a number of other car manufacturers in the list of previous employers such as Audi and Porsche.

After engineers the second largest employee base can be found in business and engineering. This is mirrored in the list of previous companies listed by employees. We see names such as EY, Siemens, Intel and Daimler show up. Company A’s employee base is very focussed and comes with a wealth of experience in the automotive industry complemented by a number of business savvy individuals and engineers.

Are ‘Company A’ Employees Loyal?

The miracle of creating a company where turnover is low and retention is high is something every company searches for. This is only one of the possibilities companies can unlock when utilizing Osterus software. Now, let’s take a closer look at employee loyalty.

Employees at Company A stay with the company for a long time, and tend to have a number of previously held positions. Employees work at Company A for an average 5.28 years and have 4.2 previously held job titles. Our analysis for other companies has shown that employees stay on average for as little as 1–2 years. This data infers that Company A employees advance quickly but stay at the company for a reasonable amount of time.

Company A’s employees usually have between 6–11 years of experience. Customer Service specialists have the longest experience length of Company A employees. Given that there are a small number of Customer Service employees it stands to reason that they are highly experienced. Executives and other specialists also have higher experience levels than the majority of employees. Company A wants experienced professionals to make up its workforce, there is a small number of employees with less than three years of experience.

How diverse is Company A?

Company A’s gender diversity statistics show the company to be overwhelmingly male. 78% of all jobs at Company A are held by men. This reflects an industry wide problem and seems to be in line with the gender diversity statistics across the automotive and tech world. Engineers and data engineers are both 89% male. Gender diversity appears to be better in roles such as Human Resources and Administration.

On a quick sidenote, Osterus recently conducted a thorough analysis of gender distribution in other companies, to find considerably healthier parameters in terms of diversity. Feel free to explore this in our piece Axios vs The Washington Post: The Origin Story of a Top-class Journalism Workforce.

In addition, even more comprehensive data was generated via the AI-powered Osterus software. In this case, more info was requested to cover Cost of Living and Quality of Life within specific regions, including Germany, Estonia and a few other countries.

Utilizing Osterus as a Window Into Quality Human Capital

Acquiring is without a doubt a long and often challenging road for any company.

Everything from structuring the deal itself to assessing post-merger liabilities. As companies explore alternatives during the acqui-hiring process, Osterus becomes a window into unique business opportunities.

Keen to learn more?

Contact us or feel free to schedule a demo.