How a Fortune 500 Company leveraged Symphony Talent assessments to predict job performance and culture fit

About the company

Renowned as an industry leader in supply chain solutions, the company bridges the gap between businesses and their consumers. Operating across vast regions throughout the United States, it champions efficient, safe, and environmentally responsible delivery services.

Evaluate candidate proficiency in multitasking and assess company alignment

The company needed to ascertain that their new hires could effectively navigate high-pressure, time-sensitive scenarios, while also integrating seamlessly into their company culture — an environment requiring an optimistic and adaptable attitude. More specifically, they were seeking an effective method to evaluate a candidate's proficiency in multitasking. Typical multiple-choice assessments, although useful, proved to be insufficient in accurately measuring such fluid skills, given their inherently linear and predictable framework.

Two-tiered assessment approach with Symphony Talent

To address this unique need, Symphony Talent implemented an innovative, custom-built, two-tiered assessment system — MultiChat and Insight. 

The MultiChat assessment is a situational judgment test that closely mirrors real-life professional scenarios. Drawing from a common experience of managing concurrent conversations via instant messaging, Symphony Talent crafted an assessment that emulates a fast-paced messaging environment that requires candidates to respond to various scenarios that the company employees experience on a regular basis. 

In this interactive assessment, candidates receive a series of rapidly incoming messages, requiring them to seamlessly shift their attention between ongoing conversations. This model also introduces frequent interruptions with new messages during active responses, simulating the real-life pressures of handling competing job demands.

To ensure candidates not only perform well but also integrate seamlessly into the company culture, the company also adopted Symphony Talent’s Insight assessment. The Insight assessment is custom-tailored to align with an organization's unique values and ethos. Its mobile-friendly interface is designed for convenience and quick administration, allowing candidates to complete the assessment anytime, anywhere. By aligning the core components of Insight with the client's culture, Symphony Talent was able to evaluate whether a candidate's personal and professional attributes resonated with the client's culture. Insight considers various competencies such as adaptability, sensitivity, conceptual,  and optimism — traits that the company values highly. 

With this dual assessment approach, the company gained a holistic view of a candidate's suitability across both functional capabilities and cultural fit. 

Results: More accurate prediction of job performance and culture fit

Candidates who scored higher on the Insight assessment were more likely to perform well in their roles, suggesting a moderate relationship between Insight scores and job performance. 

Additional metrics assessed included: 

• Customer service 
• Advancement potential 
• Efficient operations 
• Likelihood to retire 
• Performance rank 
• Overall performance

The MultiChat assessment also showed a robust correlation between assessment scores and performance. Additionally, there was a significant correlation between teamwork abilities and MultiChat scores. This is an affirmation that candidates who performed well on the MultiChat assessment were very likely to showcase superior teamwork skills in their roles.

Symphony Talent also initiated an adverse impact study to confirm the fairness and impartiality of the assessment results across varied racial/ethnic groups and genders. The assessment results were rigorously evaluated against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines (1978), specifically the 4/5ths rule and the 2 Sample z-score test. Results showed that the assessments adhered to these standards, with results demonstrating equal opportunity across groups. 

Symphony Talent’s two-tiered assessment approach, combining the situational judgment capabilities of MultiChat and the cultural alignment prowess of Insight, has proven to be a powerful tool. Not only does it accurately gauge candidates' abilities to manage high-pressure, fast-paced environments, but it also measures their potential fit within the unique organizational culture of our client. The empirical results validate the strength of this dual assessment methodology, setting a new benchmark for holistic candidate evaluations. Symphony Talent continues to pioneer cutting-edge solutions, ensuring our clients benefit from a precise, predictive, and efficient hiring process.