The Bridge: Connecting Science and Practice

Sarah Layman, DCI; Jen Harvel, Amazon; & Apryl Brodersen, Metropolitan State University of Denver

“The Bridge: Connecting Science and Practice” is a TIP column that seeks to help facilitate additional learning and knowledge transfer to encourage sound, evidence-based practice. It can provide academics with an opportunity to discuss the potential and/or realized practical implications of their research as well as learn about cutting-edge practice issues or questions that could inform new research programs or studies. For practitioners, it provides opportunities to learn about the latest research findings that could prompt new techniques, solutions, or services that would benefit the external client community. It also provides practitioners with an opportunity to highlight key practice issues, challenges, trends, and so forth that may benefit from additional research.

In this issue, Laura Fields, Sara Andrews, Matt Albar, Erin Scheuer, and Carter Gibson build upon the insights shared in the spring edition of The Bridge column, which detailed Spectrum’s innovative use of selection science through the introduction of a “Fit Finder” tool.  In this column, the authors describe the full suite of updates made to their recruitment and selection processes amidst the transformation of Spectrum stores into dynamic hubs for consumer engagement and service provision. Updates included the Fit Finder tool, a Virtual Job Tryout assessment, and tools that allow candidates to self-schedule interviews at their convenience.  Through a comprehensive overhaul of its selection procedures, Spectrum exemplifies a forward-thinking approach aimed at fostering a mutually beneficial environment for both job seekers and the company. 

Elevating Recruitment: Spectrum’s Innovative Transformation of Selection Processes

Laura Fields, Sara Andrews, Matt Albar, & Erin Scheuer
Spectrum

Carter Gibson
HireVue

Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR) is a leading broadband connectivity company and cable operator serving more than 32 million customers in 41 states through its Spectrum brand. Spectrum employs over 101k employees from field technicians to on-air broadcast talent. Today, over 5,000 of those employees support Spectrum stores.

Prior to 2019, Spectrum stores were primarily a place to pay bills or exchange equipment. During this time, the use of a prehire assessment was discontinued because the poor candidate experience of the assessment resulted in a 60% completion rate, leading to insufficient applicants from which to choose.

With the launch of Spectrum Mobile, retail stores were transformed into something more—a place to shop for new products and get support with internet, mobile, and TV services, as well as pick up equipment and make payments. With the addition of the mobile experience to the stores, the business needed a different success profile for store specialists. Although the role always called for people and communication skills, the stores now needed employees who could sell products and services, solve technical problems, keep up with technology changes, and align customer needs with various service packages. Spectrum stores needed a hiring program that would predict success in this new role as well as one that would support efficiency in the recruiting process, as Spectrum was rapidly increasing the number of retail stores within the footprint.

Overview of the Solution

Spectrum’s Selection & Assessment team partnered with HireVue to overhaul the entire selection process with an eye toward automation and embedding science to ensure effective decisions were made at each step. The solution included a pre-application Fit Finder assessment, a Virtual Job Tryout, candidate self-scheduling of a virtual interview, and a video interview. These solutions and their impacts are described below.

The first challenge was guiding candidates to the right roles. Spectrum receives over a million applications annually, most of which are for frontline roles, including field technicians, call center representatives, inside sales, outside sales, and retail sales roles. The challenge was how to make sure candidates were applying to a role that was best suited to them. That is, what if a call center applicant would be better suited for a retail sales role or a field technician would be more likely to have success in a call center role? One of Spectrum’s newest tools, Fit Finder (FF), was designed and implemented to help job seekers identify roles that would provide the greatest fit, leading to better retention and performance. In 2021 and 2022, the store specialist role was one of the most frequently recommended jobs by Fit Finder and led to over 500 direct applications to this role. (See the spring edition of The Bridge column titled “Spectrum Drives Value by Letting Candidates Find Their Fit” for a full description of the Fit Finder tool and its business impacts).

Once an application was received, a prehire assessment, called the Virtual Job Tryout (VJT), was automatically launched to quickly screen candidates using a validated, job-related tool that would predict success on the job as well as retention. The VJT included a realistic job preview and assessment items that were highly customized to the role of a Spectrum store specialist. For example, the assessment includes a customized problem-solving section that requires applicants to pair a customer’s unique needs with the cable/internet package that best suits those needs.  The concurrent validation for this VJT shows uncorrected correlations in the low thirties with ratings of supervisory performance and high teens/low twenties for objective sales metrics. Test fairness is an important issue, especially with the aggressive cut score used. Spectrum found the VJT greatly exceeded legal standards with an average 4/5ths ratio for all protected groups of .95.

Upon earning a qualifying score, candidates were invited, via a self-scheduling tool, to schedule an interview at their convenience. Previously, this was a manual step requiring recruiters to reach out and schedule interviews for each applicant. Once scheduled, the interview was able to be conducted either on-site or virtually. This flexibility in approach was critical to Spectrum’s ability to adapt its hiring process in 2020. Prepandemic, all new store specialists needed to pass a hiring manager interview, typically on-site at the retail location where they would work. Due to pandemic restrictions and concerns for the safety of both staff and applicants, this step was no longer possible to do in person. With just a small configuration change, Spectrum shifted all interviews to HireVue’s video interview platform.

Given Spectrum’s business model, many of its applicants are also customers. This means that even if an offer is not extended, it’s important that candidates have a positive experience throughout the hiring process. To gauge successful achievement of this goal, candidates had the option of providing feedback at several steps along the hiring process.

After completing Fit Finder, job seekers could rate their reactions using a Likert scale, including whether the recommended jobs were interesting to them (85% agree/strongly agree), whether their results made them aware of jobs at this organization that were new to them (86% agree/strongly agree), whether their results would help inform their job search at this organization (89% agree/strongly agree), whether they would like to apply for one or more of these jobs (88% agree/strongly agree), and whether they learned something about their personality and interests by taking this inventory (89%). Although it’s hard to determine a causal explanation for this effect, the data strongly suggests that Fit Finder plays a role in applicant engagement.

After completing the VJT, candidates indicated it provided them with a better understanding of the role (98% agree/strongly agree), that having participated in the VJT experience better equipped them to determine if the role was right for them (99% agree/strongly agree), and that based on their experience they would gladly tell their friends about employment opportunities at Spectrum (99% agree/strongly agree). In a posthire new hire survey, new store specialists indicated they had a positive interview experience (97% agree/strongly agree) and a positive experience taking the assessment for their position (95% agree/strongly agree).

Last, candidates were asked to provide any additional comments they wished to share throughout the process. Results from these items echo the quantitative feedback. Although candidates may not have an explicit seat at the table in determining the hiring process, this work gives them a voice in the process and is one of the strongest sources of HRM impact.

Business Impact

Spectrum was able to demonstrate a significant business impact of this new selection process with performance and retention prediction. In the store specialist role, performance is measured as percent to goal attainment. For example, if a goal was $100 in sales and a specialist sold $100, that would be 100% goal attainment. In 2020–2021, highly recommended candidates outperformed those in proceed with caution by 4.2% on mobile goal attainment (their goal of adding new mobile customers) and 2.5% on core goal attainment (their overall sales goal). Because Spectrum was able to hire primarily from the “highly recommended” category, this led to hundreds of additional sales per employee per year.

Spectrum and HireVue conducted a follow-up predictive validation of the assessment in 2021 to refine the scoring of the VJT. Following that, in 2022, first-year turnover was lowest for those highly recommended—a full 7.5% lower than proceed with caution and 4.3% lower than the average. That year, 3,092 store specialists were hired, 1,829 of which were highly recommended (59%). Those hires saved Spectrum, conservatively, $817,928.80 in salary and $330,317.40 in recruiting costs, resulting in a total retention savings of $1,148,246.20.

The prediction improvement between the 2020 and 2022 underscores the need to constantly monitor the performance of each piece of a selection process. Spectrum and HireVue plan to do exactly that and have plans for additional VJT analyses in 2024. Spectrum also plans to expand the connection to Fit Finder participants, with reminders about open positions that are aligned with their work styles and preferences. All these efforts are targeted at maintaining or improving the impact on Spectrum stores and other frontline roles.

Conclusion

Spectrum is proud of its candidate-centric selection process. Spectrum offers job seekers the ability to make an informed job choice through the FitFinder assessment, which provides individuals information on their unique work persona and suggests jobs at Spectrum that are aligned with that persona. Job seekers who choose to apply to a store specialist role will be provided a realistic job preview and the opportunity to learn about common scenarios faced on the job within the Virtual Job Tryout. Finally, candidates who move forward in the process have the convenience of self-scheduling their phone screen. Because HireVue’s selection science is the foundation for these steps, putting the candidate first has delivered measurable impact for Spectrum’s bottom line.