Psychometric Product Review: Wave Professional Styles from Saville Consulting

Press Release

Article One: Psychometric Product Review: Wave Professional Styles from Saville Consulting

Company Name: Saville Consulting

Product Name: Wave Professional Styles

Website Address: www.savilleconsulting.com

Description (provided by Saville Consulting):"A new online questionnaire measuring personality, motivation, competencies and preferred culture, all combined in one dynamic instrument."

Cost: Bureau scoring costs £75 per candidate for each of the expert/type/entrepreneurial reports (the fee includes a personal report for candidate feedback). If you buy your own system (with £1000 set up fee) each report costs £50 per candidate.

Do you have to be qualified to interpret the questionnaires?: Users need to have completed a British Psychological Society (BPS) verified Level A and B programme. A one day conversion training course (ie for users already trained in OPQ, 16Pf etc) costs £550 (including 5 reports, value £375). Distance learning is available.

Candidate Experience (guinea pig candidate was Louise): It took about 40 minutes to complete the questionnaire. The instructions were easy to read and understand. You get an example question to ensure you understand the process. There were 36 screens of 6 statements. Initially you have to rate each statement by clicking on the appropriate button from 'very strongly disagree' to 'very strongly agree'. When I gave the same rating for two or more statements these statements were presented to me again and I was asked to indicate which statement was "most" like me and which statement was "least" like me. In some cases I had to repeat this process more than once before moving on to the next set of statements. There were some occasions where I really couldn't choose between two statements to decide which was most like me so I felt I was practically picking one at random. When I saw the feedback report I felt the results were very accurate. The level of detail in the report leave little scope for misunderstanding.

Overview of Feedback Report:
I reviewed the expert report. This is was 12 pages long. After an introduction to the product and the background to its creation the first part of the feedback is a one page profile chart. This shows the candidate's score against the 12 sections that make up the Wave profile. The chart is split into four main "clusters" (these are thought, influence, adaptability and delivery). Each cluster is spilt into 3 sections (eg, the sections within the thought cluster are inventive, abstract and strategic) making up the 36 dimensions. This is an overview chart - each of the clusters is explored in depth on the following pages. These pages give a very simple to read - but highly detailed explanation of the candidate's responses to the questionnaire. The chart doesn't just give a ranking number. With the majority of questionnaires I've reviewed a personality dimension is shown (eg, change orientated) and the candidate is ranked on a scale of 1 to 10. With the Wave report the individual facets of the dimension are shown (eg, for our guinea pig candidate under the facet of "interactive" the individual dimensions were "networks well", "tends to talk a lot" and "more lively than most people") This means the product is actually looking at 108 different traits (based around talent and motive) and also explores the alignment of the talent and motive responses. Elements which are not covered in more traditional questionnaires are included, such as comfort with IT. The feedback report also includes a competency profile and a culture fit chart which shows what culture the candidate would most probably seek in a new organisation.

There are two other profile's available: entrepreneurial report and types report. These are more commonly used outside of the traditional selection process for development or team building exercises.

Summary
This product produces a very in depth feedback report which is easy to understand. Its price and the time it takes a candidate to complete would mean it is most suitable for use at shortlist or final interview stage rather than as a screening tool (which is also Saville's recommendation). For some clients the amount of time it would take to give feedback could mean it is either passed over for a more quick and basic product or not used to its full advantage. However, Saville Consulting will launch "Wave Focus"in August, which will be a 15 minute version of the Wave questionnaire, with a claimed 80% of the validity of the full version. The other limiting factor with the product is that you are required to be a BPS level B administrator in order to use it. For those of you with the qualifications and senior candidates to assess I don't think you'll find a better product.

For more information: Chris Small was my contact at Saville Consulting. He can be contacted on 01372 475716

Louise Triance is a British Psychological Society level A&B trained assessor, conducting psychometrics on behalf of recruiters. For more information call Louise on 07724 197830, email contact2@ukrecruiter.co.uk or visit http://www.nmib.com/testing/index.htm