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Reducing mis-hires: the science behind Wave Connect

Written by Rab MacIver | 07 Sep, 2026

Where the process usually breaks

Three failure points account for most of it. Roles get defined by job title rather than by what good performance looks like. Screening happens on CV proxies — years of experience, previous employer, education — that predict performance far more weakly than most people assume. And where assessment is used, the results arrive too late to change the shortlist.

 

What Wave Connect changes

The platform starts from the role rather than the candidate. Role profiling establishes what actually drives performance in that specific job, in that specific organization — built from data on people already doing it well, not from a generic competency library.

Candidates are then measured against that profile on behavior and ability, and the results attach to their record in the ATS. That last part matters more than it sounds: when assessment data travels with the candidate, you can analyze quality of hire afterwards instead of arguing about it.

What good looks like in practice

Organizations that get this right tend to share three habits: they profile the role before opening the requisition, they set an assessment threshold and hold to it, and they train hiring managers to read the output rather than treating it as a score to nod at. The third habit is the one most often skipped, and the one that most affects whether any of it sticks.