At our core, Freshminds exists to solve one of the most critical challenges facing leadership teams today: making the right senior hires.
Whether that’s appointing a Chief of Staff to unlock executive leverage, hiring a commercial leader to drive growth, or shaping a C-1 strategy function, the stakes are always high. The cost of getting it wrong is not just financial - it’s strategic.
This is one of the reasons why Freshminds has invested in training and accreditation to now provide Hogan Assessments.
Hogan is one of the leading providers of personality assessment tests, which help to predict occupational performance.
This decision wasn’t about adding another “tool” to the Freshminds’ process. It’s about deepening the way we understand leadership potential, performance, and risk, particularly within the complex, high-impact roles in which we specialise.
Moving Beyond Experience and Interviews
Traditional executive hiring often leans heavily on track record, interviews, and references. While these remain important, they only tell part of the story, particularly as organisations place greater emphasis on skills and impact over status.
The reality is that many senior hires fail not because they lack capability, but because of misalignment of style, values, or how people respond under pressure.
Hogan Assessments allow us to dig a little deeper, bringing a more structured, evidence-based lens to understanding leadership performance.
Grounded in decades of research into personality science, Hogan provides objective insight into three critical areas:
How leaders typically show up day-to-day (their strengths and operating style)
How they respond under stress or pressure (potential derailers)
What motivates and drives them at a deeper level
For C-suite and C-1 roles, where ambiguity is high and the margin for error is low, these insights are invaluable.
Enhancing How We Advise, Not Just Assess
As a boutique search firm, Freshminds’ value has always been rooted in judgement, close client partnership, and a deep understanding of the roles we support. Becoming Hogan-accredited enhances these attributes.
It allows us to:
Bring greater rigour to shortlisting by complementing our qualitative assessment with robust, data-driven insight.
Support better decision-making by helping clients understand not just who a candidate is, but how they are likely to perform in their specific context.
Facilitate more meaningful conversations during the hiring process, particularly around leadership style, culture, and team dynamics.
Importantly, it also helps us challenge assumptions, both ours and our clients’. In senior hiring, confidence can sometimes mask risk. Hogan gives us a structured way to surface and explore that risk constructively.
A Better Experience for Candidates
This investment is not only about outcomes for clients. It also improves the experience for candidates.
Senior leaders increasingly expect a more thoughtful, insight-led hiring process. Hogan Assessments provide candidates with a deeper understanding of their own leadership profile - often highlighting strengths and blind spots they hadn’t previously articulated.
When used well, this creates a more balanced, two-way dialogue. Candidates can better evaluate whether a role truly fits them, not just whether they can do it. That leads to more sustainable, successful appointments.
Supporting Long-Term Success
Our involvement doesn’t end when a hire is made. One of the most powerful aspects of Hogan is its application beyond selection.
We can use the insights generated to support onboarding and integration, to help new hires understand how they are likely to be perceived, where they may need to adapt, and how to maximise their impact early on.
For roles such as Chief of Staff or strategic operators, where success often depends on influence rather than authority, this level of self-awareness can be a decisive advantage.
What’s on Offer?
For clients wanting to take advantage of this new offering from Freshminds, we can discuss and determine the best fit for use within the assessment process. We will take a collaborative approach in analysing and interpreting the findings, with the aim of enhancing your decision-making process.
Why Now?
The nature of leadership is evolving. Roles are broader, environments are more uncertain, and expectations are higher than ever. You can read more about this in our recent article, "How the C-suite is being rewired in the age of AI.”
At the same time, organisations are becoming more deliberate about how they define and assess leadership effectiveness.
We believe our role as a search partner must evolve accordingly.
Becoming accredited to deliver Hogan Assessments is a natural extension of our commitment to quality, rigour, and long-term client outcomes. It reflects our belief that great hiring decisions are built on both insight and judgement, and that the best results come when the two are combined.
For our clients, it means more confidence in critical hiring decisions. For candidates, it means a more thoughtful and valuable process. And for Freshminds, it’s another step towards delivering the level of impact our clients expect.
How Personality Assessments Predict Performance – FAQs
Do personality assessments actually predict job performance?
When grounded in robust research, personality assessments can provide strong indicators of how individuals are likely to behave at work. While they don’t replace experience or judgement, they add an additional layer of insight, particularly around leadership style, decision-making, and how individuals respond under pressure.
How are personality assessments used in senior hiring?
In executive search, personality assessments are typically used alongside interviews and references to build a more complete picture of a candidate. They help organisations understand not just what someone has done, but how they are likely to operate in a specific role and environment.
What makes Hogan Assessments different?
Hogan Assessments are grounded in decades of personality research and focus specifically on predicting workplace performance. They provide insight into day-to-day leadership style, potential derailers under pressure, and underlying motivations — all of which are critical at senior levels.
Are personality assessments suitable for all roles?
They are most valuable in senior or high-impact roles where leadership style, judgement, and influence are key to success. In these contexts, the cost of misalignment is higher, and deeper behavioural insight becomes more important.
How do personality assessments improve hiring decisions?
They help reduce risk by identifying potential blind spots, misalignments, or behavioural patterns that may not surface in interviews alone. This allows for more informed decision-making and more open, structured conversations during the hiring process.
To find out more about utilising Hogan Assessments within your next Search process, contact our director of Search, Edith Carmichael, on edith.carmichael@freshminds.co.uk
