Peter Saville, Executive Chairman

Selected Publications and Presentations

Professor Peter Saville is International Chairman of Saville Consulting, an international group of work psychologists, human resource, business and IT consultants, specialising in the attraction, assessment, selection and development of talent at work. He is acknowledged as a world-wide authority in the field of Industrial psychology and has been referred to as an "assessment guru".

Previously Peter was Founder, Managing Director and Chairman of SHL and Executive Chairman of SHL Group plc, which was started on £100 and he took to a value of £250 million on the London Stock Exchange. SHL was one of the largest international consultancy groups specialising in the development and assessment of people at work, having subsidiaries in the UK and 40 countries including the USA, Australia, Japan and all of the major European economies. Peter severed all links with SHL in 2004 following a major disagreement over board policy, particularly over new product development and the use of tests delivered unsupervised on the Internet, which he believed would lead to candidate cheating.

Peter is co-ordinating the international activities of the Saville Consulting Group, excluding the United Kingdom, based in Jersey, the British Channel Islands. He is heavily involved in new product development, training, consultancy and has established operations in Europe, the United States, Asia Pacific, Australia, South America and the Caribbean.

Peter graduated with Honours in Psychology and subsequently completed his Masters and Doctorate degrees with research into ability and personality structure. His PhD was examined by Professor Hans Eysenck. In 1970 he joined the Test Division of the National Foundation for Educational Research as an assistant psychologist. When he left the NFER in 1977 he was Chief Psychologist of the Test Division and responsible for the standardisation of psychological and educational tests for clinical, educational and industrial use.

Peter Saville has published over 200 academic papers, psychometric tests and books; from articles on test validation, occupational selection, ability and aptitude testing to personality research. He created the original Occupational Personality Questionnaires (OPQ) in 1984, which have been used by literally millions of people world-wide and translated into some 20 languages

Peter's consultancy experience includes many assignments for companies in managerial, engineering, graduate, technical and sales staff selection. He has acted as a specialist consultant to the United Nations in staff selection and spoken at numerous conferences worldwide including the British Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, the Institute of Personnel and Development, the British Psychological Society and the International Association of Applied Psychology. He has been invited to address management and professional institutes worldwide, from the United States to Japan. Peter succeeded Professor Philip Vernon as International Consultant Psychologist to Mensa and was Psychometric Test Consultant to Hodder and Stoughton Educational. He has also worked at Oxfam and the Royal National Institute for the Blind.

Peter Saville is a Chartered Psychologist, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Member of the Institute of Directors, was invited and admitted to the Royal Society of Medicine and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1998 he was listed by Enterprise Magazine as one of the UK's Top Entrepreneurs and in 2001 as one of Britain's Top Ten Psychologists, the only Work Psychologist in the listing. Peter was Visiting Professor of Occupational Psychology at Queen's University from 1991 to 1995, and is currently Visiting Professor at Kingston Business School. He has supervised and examined at Doctorate level.

Peter's photograph hung in the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2001 on receiving the British Psychological Society Centenary Award for Distinguished Contributions to Professional Psychology in 2000. He was the first Industrial Psychologist to be so honoured. His citation read:

Peter has given numerous papers, talks, keynote speeches, and chaired symposia at many International Conferences. He has broadcast widely on British, American and other TV and radio programmes around the World.

Peter's academic interests cover business psychology, marketing, intelligence, the structure and assessment of personality; recruitment and selection; human resource and business management; sports psychology, multivariate statistics and diversity. His main area, however, has been psychometrics: standardising, researching and developing tests of general intelligence (IQ) and tests of verbal, numerical, mechanical, and spatial abilities, as well as those of personality, not only for industry but also for military, educational and clinical applications.

Peter was born in a working class area of London, England. Being dyslexic, due to a short term memory deficit probably caused by extreme medical treatments during his childhood he languished in the toughest London secondary modern schools until he learnt to rely on visual rather than echoic memory, when he was transferred to an academic grammar school at the late age of 13. Peter underwent what was called "barbaric" and inappropriate treatment as an infant for a pseudo-scoliosis. He also received neck injuries from playing rugby and football.

Peter's interests include military history and music. A very competitive sportsman, Peter played soccer into his forties, he qualified as a soccer coach and growing up in Shepherds Bush, London, a QPR supporter. He was an avid squash player, enjoyed cricket as a wicket-keeper and rugby as a number eight while at athletics he competed in the long jump, the shot and discus. He still plays tennis and golf. Peter lives in Jersey but also has villas at Royal Westmorland, Barbados and the Portuguese Algarve.

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