Success profiling: agree what good looks like
THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT ASSESS WITH US
Where this usually starts
Success profiling, also known as role profiling, defines in writing what predicts performance in a role.
A first-time role
You are hiring for something the organization has never had before. There is no one to benchmark against, no scorecard, and five opinions about what the person needs to be good at.
A high-stakes appointment
The cost of getting this one wrong is measured in years, not weeks. Everyone around the table has a view on what the role needs, and none of those views is written down anywhere you could show a board.
The same role, repeatedly
You hire this role in four countries and three managers run the interviews. Each of them has a slightly different idea of what good looks like, so the hires come out different too.
A room that disagrees
The hiring manager wants one thing, the function head wants another, and the disagreement only surfaces at shortlist, which is the expensive place to have it. Nobody has written the criteria down and ranked them.
A decision questioned later
Six months on, someone asks why this candidate and not that one. Without criteria agreed before the process started, the honest answer is that the panel preferred them.
What you leave the session with
The success profile
A written standard for one specific role
-
Behaviors ranked by importance to the role
-
Must-haves separated from nice-to-haves
Shared priorities
One view of the role across your stakeholders
-
Agreed in the session, not after shortlist
-
The disagreement surfaces early, not at offer stage
A reusable standard
The same criteria every time you hire it
-
Reusable across similar roles and locations
-
Evidence you can show when a decision is challenged
How success profiling works
Four steps, from the job description you already have to a success profile your hiring managers use on every interview for that role.
You give us the job description and tell us who owns the decision. That is usually the hiring manager, the function head, and whoever will run the interviews. No preparation is needed from any of them.
We generate an initial success profile before the session, so your stakeholders start from something concrete rather than a blank page and an hour of open discussion.
Up to 60 minutes online, led by a Saville expert. Your stakeholders work through the draft, rank what matters most, and separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves. The profile is signed off before the session ends.
The agreed success profile sets the assessment criteria, shapes the interview questions, and gives every interviewer the same basis for comparing candidates. Reuse it the next time you hire that role.
Start with one role
Frequently Asked Questions
The things hiring teams check before they book a session.
A job description lists duties. A success profile ranks the behaviors that predict someone performing well in the role, and separates what is essential from what is merely desirable. One is written to attract applicants, the other to measure them.
The people who own the decision: the hiring manager, the function or department head, and whoever will run the interviews. Anyone whose sign-off you would need at offer stage should be in the room, because that is the disagreement you are trying to surface early.
Yes. A finalized success profile can be reused across similar roles and in other locations, so the same role is measured the same way by every manager in every market. Success profiling pays back fastest on roles you hire repeatedly.
It removes the biggest source of inconsistency: criteria that get set after the candidates are already in front of you. Everyone is measured against the same ranked behaviors, not whatever an interviewer happened to value that day. The framework underneath was rated 27 out of 30 by the British Psychological Society.
You receive the agreed success profile, and it becomes the criteria your assessment and interview stage runs against. Teams usually pair it with a stakeholder debrief once results are in, so the same standard carries through to the final decision.
Tell us which role to start with
Send us the role and we will come back with who needs to be in the session.