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Every business has a senior hire it still talks about

Usually not fondly. Executive hiring assessment measures leadership impact and leadership risk before you appoint, so the hire people still talk about is the one that worked. 

Leadership-woman

Senior appointments made on evidence

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What changes

The damage goes beyond the financial

Senior appointments still get made on reputation, on a strong interview and on who already knows the candidate. When one fails it does not fail cleanly. The cost people count is the salary and the search fee, twice. The cost they do not count is everything the role touched on the way through, and at this level that is a function, a culture and sometimes a license to operate. 

Source: Sapio Research for Saville Assessment, 2026. 

What the evidence covers

What an executive hiring assessment measures

Two readings from one assessment, because the question is not only what this person will do well. 

What they will actually move

Where this leader will make a difference, read across the professional, people and pioneering sides of the job, and mapped to the objectives the appointment is being made to deliver. 

What shows up under pressure

The unintended consequences of a particular combination of behaviors, especially under stress. We surface them before the appointment is made, while you can still do something about them. Left to emerge on their own, derailers only show up once someone is in the role, which at this level is far too late to be useful. 

Fewer than a quarter of HR leaders are completely confident their organization can identify leadership risk before it affects performance or culture. 

Sapio Research for Saville Assessment, 2026. 

 Both come from one completion of our most comprehensive behavioral assessment, so the candidate is asked once and the appointment panel gets both lenses.  

What it costs to get wrong

What a failed senior appointment actually costs

Around one in five leadership appointments is later counted a mistake by the people who made it. At this level, one of those runs from £100,000 to £300,000, and up to three times salary for a C-suite role. That is before the vacancy reopens, before the function stalls waiting for direction, and before anyone counts the people who left while it was going on. 
Tell us how you assess leadership candidates today and how many senior hires you make a year, and see the likely cost of getting them wrong and what assessing with Saville would save. 
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1 in 5 to 1 in 50

reduce the risk of appointing a poor performer, with our behavioral assessment.

Double

the validity, and double the return on what you spend on assessment.  

Client proof

Appointments made with the evidence in the room

Help & Support

Frequently asked questions

The things appointment panels and CHROs ask us first. If yours is not here, ask us directly. 

Almost always, and the objection is usually ours rather than theirs. A candidate at this level is already committing to several rounds of interviews and the preparation that goes with them, and an assessment is a smaller ask than one more panel. Where an external search firm is involved, the assessment usually strengthens their recommendation rather than competing with it. 

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