Article · 5-minute read
By Laura Stewart – 21st February 2025
Accurate role profiling is foundational to effective hiring, involving a thorough analysis of a job’s demands and the key behavioral traits needed for success. A well-defined role profile creates clarity and alignment on the characteristics of an ideal candidate, enhancing the ability to make well-informed hiring decisions. Historically, role profiling has been a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, putting it at risk of being rushed or neglected altogether.
As organizations strive to improve both the quality and the efficiency of hiring processes, a question arises; can generative AI provide a valuable shortcut for role profiling without compromising accuracy and fairness?
It’s important to distinguish between job analysis and role profiling:
involves in-depth research and data collection to define the responsibilities and requirements of a role, which is especially critical in regulated environments like the U.S. Whenever possible, it should be supported by a validation study conducted with a sufficient number of employees. Job analysis is the initial step and should always be carried out prior to role profiling.
Identifies the measurable skills, behaviors or aptitudes essential for success in the role, based on the findings of a job analysis.
The role profile creates a framework against which to assess candidates, with scores used for powering selection and/or development.
Our focus with Wave Connect is on enhancing the efficiency of role profiling, not replacing the important process of job analysis.
We set out to explore how generative AI could accelerate role profiling and whether AI-generated role profiles could serve as a reliable starting point for experienced professionals to refine and finalize.
To put AI to the test, experienced Saville Assessment psychologists were tasked with profiling 15 different roles using our Wave behavioral model, working solely from job descriptions. At the same time, we prompted AI with the same job descriptions and asked it to generate profiles for the same roles. To evaluate the success of the AI-generated profiles, we compared the similarity and consistency of AI-generated profiles against those created by our talent assessment professionals.
Here’s what we discovered.
AI significantly outpaced humans — delivering profiles in seconds compared to the ~10 minutes it took human experts.
AI proved capable of delivering role profiles that closely resembled those created by human subject matter experts.
AI demonstrated a good degree of consistency, reliably producing highly similar (but not identical) role profiles when tasked with profiling the same role multiple times.
Our research found no evidence of adverse impact being introduced by the AI role profiling process. This was no surprise, as the fairness of a Wave-based role profile stems from the fairness of the Wave assessment itself. Still, it was reassuring to see that AI-generated role profiles can play an important part in fair and unbiased hiring or development processes.
The key conclusion of this exercise was that AI has the potential to significantly streamline the role profiling process, which is why the Wave Connect role profiling tool is AI-powered.
This tool allows users to upload a job description or provide key terms describing the role, and instantly receive a recommendation as to which Wave Skill Potential Areas are most critical for success and which are less important. Key stakeholders can easily review the AI-generated profile, ensure it reflects the unique needs of the organization and role, and make any necessary adjustments to fine-tune the profile.
It’s important to emphasize that we’re not suggesting generative AI is capable of replacing human subject matter experts in a role profiling process. Rather, AI can be used to significantly accelerate the process, offering the best of both worlds — AI-driven efficiency with human expert oversight to ensure quality and accuracy.
It significantly reduces the time required for role profiling, making it a valuable shortcut.
AI should assist rather than replace human experts; review and refinement are still necessary to ensure contextual relevance, and compliance with best practice.
AI-supported role profiling should not compromise assessment fairness. In fact, the ability to quickly generate consistent role profiles could make overall selection processes more unbiased.
In conclusion, AI-enhanced HR technology solutions have the power to transform recruitment, development and broader talent management. Wave Connect is harnessing AI to revolutionize role profiling – just one of many areas where intelligent automation can streamline previously time-consuming processes. By making these processes more efficient, AI empowers talent professionals to do more with less, allowing them to focus their time and energy on the most critical decisions that drive key business objectives and fuel organizational success.
Get in touch to demo Wave Connect, its AI role-profiling feature and to learn how it can help streamline your selection processes.
Laura is a Consultant Analyst at Saville Assessment having recently completed her MSc in Occupational Psychology with a focus on psychometric assessments. She has previous experience as a project manager in the Expert Network industry.
You can connect with Laura on LinkedIn here.
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