Blogs

The Guardian has featured research performed by our expert Predrag Petrovic on football / soccer and executive functions in an article about “Football Intelligence” and whether players can develop it.

In a study published in the research journal Biological Psychiatry – Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, our experts Predrag Petrovic and John Axelsson show that healthy individuals with ADHD tendencies will become significantly worse in cognitive tasks if they do not sleep than those without such tendencies.

This suggests that a large proportion of the population is especially vulnerable to modern way of life with less sleep due to use of digital media late in the night. It also adds to the unresolved question why the effects of sleep deprivation is so variable between different individuals.

This suggests that a large proportion of the population is especially vulnerable to modern way of life with less sleep due to use of digital media late in the night. It also adds to the unresolved question why the effects of sleep deprivation is so variable between different individuals.

Check out all findings and the full article here

Inverse reviewed and commented on the study here

We are very proud and honored to announce that Capacio has received the Top Assessment 2020 Award recognized by HR Tech Outlook in the category

Also, make sure to check out the article from HR Tech Outlook featuring Capacio and how we enrich objective assessment through neuroscience-based tools. You can access the article directly here and find out more.

Got interested? Contact us on our website to learn about our services!

Capacio expert Predrag Petrovic was featured in the latest podcast [only in Swedish] of “Medicinvetarna” at Karolinska Institutet. Make sure to find out what he had to say about the effects and the use of psychedelics in medicine – especially when it comes to our brains.

Check out the full article here at Karolinska Institutet.

Capacio expert and sleep scientist, professor John Axelsson was part in the last episode of Framgångspodden, the largest interview pod in the Nordic countries, with roughly 3 million listeners per month.

Founder Alexander Pärleros aims to help people reach success in every part of their lives.

The featured episode (Swedish only) is about what we can do to support sleep, what happens when we sleep too little, and how sleep can help us optimize learning. And much more.

The podcast can be accessed here:

– PODDTOPPEN:

https://poddtoppen.se/podcast/985517492/framgangspodden/407-john-axelsson-forbattra-din-somn-original

– APPLE PODCASTS:

https://poddtoppen.se/podcast/985517492/framgangspodden/407-john-axelsson-forbattra-din-somn-original

If you want to hire John as a speaker or learn more about your own cognitive capacities with our test or are interested in Capacio AB, contact us for additional information and your personal, your team’s, or your organization’s assessment.

Prejudice is difficult to wash away and bias in recruiting – consciously and unconsciously – is a global problem. Unbiased recruitment is about avoiding decisions based on gut feeling and prejudice. Gender, age and ethnicity negatively affect our recruitment decisions more than we want and result in erroneous recruiting, discrimination, high costs, lost income, time and effort as well as lack of development.

On top of this bias, as much as 74% of recruiters admit they have hired the wrong person for a certain position, surely also influenced by the fact that 78% of candidate CVs contain misleading statements while 46% contain actual lies (1,2).

Capturing the bias in the recruiting process

Bias in recruiting happens when an opinion is formed about a candidate based solely on first, subjective impressions or because you personally would more likely prefer or befriend one candidate over another for any subjective reason (3). It comes in any form reaching from gender (e.g. preferring male over female candidates), ethnicity, age, experience, or simply the hometown, the university or college someone previously attended. A study showed that white-sounding names received 50% more calls for interviews than identical resumes of black-sounding names (4).

Recruitment is hard and there is a lack of objective assessment tools

In order to reach higher objectivity when recruiting, 70% of employers do some sort of job skill testing and 46% use some kind of personality or psychological testing (5). Still, while most employers admit they nevertheless have recruited unsuccessfully, 50% of job postings even remain open for more than 90 days because the “right” person is not found. 27% of all recruitments are considered unsuccessful and only 50% are considered successful (6,7). 72% of companies in all sectors say it’s hard to recruit and more than 40 % of the companies claim it is the biggest threat to expansion and development (8). The explanation to these numbers was exposed already in the 1980’s and 90’s, when Schmidt & Hunter concluded that existing recruiting tools just don’t have the power needed to predict job-performance. (9, 10)

The problem should be obvious: There is a lack of evidence-based, objective assessment tools paired with time pressure for recruiters, high number of applications and accompanied manual CV-based interview processes. All of this is triggering bias. Decisions are taken from false subjective interpretations and unstandardized interviews with lacking diversity in interview panels result in subjective selection and assessment processes (11).

Consequently, something seems to be missing in traditional psychological testing.

Neuroscience offers more objective assessments to understand people

Independently of their validity, traditional psychological testing tools like personality tests and intelligence or so called general mental ability tests dominate the assessment market, are used and exist in more versions and varieties than ever – due to lacking alternatives.

What many people do not know is that neuroscience has contributed with sharp and objective assessment tools that support both a deeper understanding of people’s inherent abilities and potential as well as objectivity and non-bias. These tools were developed many decades ago after discovering that people with severe brain injuries maintained their IQ but could not live functioning lives. Neuroscience has since then developed fine-tuned assessments of various cognitive functions explaining behaviors. They have been long used by neuropsychologists in psychiatric clinics to help people with cognitive function deficits to lead functioning lives. Lately, scientists have shown that these same assessment tools can be used to understand normal and high functioning individuals and teams and help them to improve job-performance by optimizing and compensating behaviors with deepened self-insight and development (12).

How to avoid the bias with objective neuropsychological testing

Neuropsychological assessments are evidence-based, valid, standardized and normed against huge sample sizes. This means they are performed in similar circumstances every time and that the test result can be compared independently of age, gender or ethnicity in the most objective way available.

In contrast to personality tests, where measuring a vague overt or observable behavior by asking the subject to describe oneself or a small part of a person’s intelligence as a base for performance, neuroscience allows assessment of innate abilities – cognitive abilities. These abilities are called executive functions and reside in the frontal lobe. Each person has a different cognitive profile and the various abilities have different capacities. The set of abilities with different capacities form an individual, unique cognitive profile that to a large extent explains how we see and experience the world around us, incoming information and how we remember and process this information to make decisions, solve problems and take actions. And how we deal with others, handle conflicts, etc.

By understanding these abilities or functions, their capacity and how they interact, we can better understand our own or other people’s behavior performance capacity, talent and potential. And use this insight to secure unbiased recruitment, teambuilding and job performance.

In practice, these neuro-based assessments allow to see a person’s underlying abilities, capacity and potential. Independently of past jobs, competencies, skills and CV. Using this deeper insight into a person not only encourages more unbiased decisions in recruiting that are less triggered by gut feeling, but also better matches and completes people in teams and organizations. It creates more optimal environments for everybody to increase knowledge and optimize personal leadership, well-being and in the end: on-the-job-performance.

Send us an e-mail for additional information and your personal, your team’s or your organization’s assessment.

—STAY TUNED—

Sources:

1. http://press.careerbuilder.com/2017-12-07-Nearly-Three-in-Four-Employers-Affected-by-a-Bad-Hire-According-to-a-Recent-CareerBuilder-Survey

2. https://www.criteriacorp.com/resources/definitive-guide-validity-of-preemployment-tests/the-benefits-using-pre-employment-tests

3. https://resources.workable.com/stories-and-insights/unconscious-bias-in-recruitment

4. https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

5. https://www.criteriacorp.com/resources/definitive-guide-validity-of-preemployment-tests/what-are-pre-employment-tests

6. https://www.svensktnaringsliv.se/fragor/rekryteringsenkaten/

7. https://www.saljpoolen.se/sv/blogg/vad-kostar-en-felrekrytering

8. https://hrpeople.se/2018/08/22/kompetensforsorjning-i-siffror/

9. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286371278_Task_differences_as_moderators_of_aptitude_test_validity_in_selection_A_red_herring

10. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232564809_The_Validity_and_Utility_of_Selection_Methods_in_Personnel_Psychology

11. https://www.talentlyft.com/en/blog/article/331/top-20-recruitment-challenges-to-tackle-in-2020

12. https://chef.se/story/darfor-blir-fotbollsspelare-bra-chefer/

Listen to the full, very exciting and entertaining podcast (available in Swedish only) with John here on “poddtoppen.se” to learn more about what sleep does for our health, for our brain functions, and how leaders can benefit from this knowledge.

“A Boss – The Lifeline for Sweden’s Managers” is a regular podcast series also available on e.g. Spotify and Acast for and by managers hosted by EGN CEO Daniel Stenmark. Welcoming known and unknown guests from Sweden’s entire business community, the podcast series in general talks about current trends and (new) tools that make leaders smarter and their everyday life a bit easier and more fun.

If you want to hire John as a speaker or learn more about your own cognitive capacities with our test or are interested about Capacio AB, contact us for additional information and your personal, your team’s or your organization’s assessment.

— STAY TUNED —

For more information, go ahead and read the full study here or access his blog about the study on Behavioral and Social Sciences at Nature Research.

On top, we are excited to announce that we will soon offer a webinar “Listen to the Expert” with Predrag Petrovic about the study results, executive functions and the science behind it. Executive functions and cognitive flexibility are not only connected to soccer but also relevant to gain deeper insights into behavior and performance in general.

Summary of the study and what the results mean for individuals and businesses

The study sets out to understand how executive brain functions – innate abilities – are the underlying mechanisms that to a large extent explain successful and less successful human behavior and performance.

In soccer, executive functions such as cognitive flexibility relate strongly to game intelligence, the ability to read a game and then quickly and accurately adjust behavior dynamically. This is a prerequisite for reaching an overall goal in a constantly changing environment and in the end overall success as a soccer player. Just like in sports, dynamics and new emerging situations occur equally in people’s day-to-day lifes and at the work place requiring an executive capacity for constant adaptations of (competitive) behavior and actions as well as sometimes quick strategy revisions. Understanding one’s very own executive functions and the related strengths and weaknesses can help to be more successful in terms of career or simply life in general. And for business to become better at securing the right person at the right place and time.

Contact us here on our website to stay tuned for more information and news about the future webinar.

—STAY TUNED—

STOCKHOLM. Capacio AB is pleased to announce that as from now on, Håkan Nilsson, CEO and Founder of IT logistics company Zinnovate International, joins the Board of Capacio as a Senior Advisor while his company Zinnovate International will enter Capacio partner program in piloting Capacio cognitive assessment testing and services – Game Analysis. Being a young and fast accelerating digital company in Sweden, Capacio is very excited to welcome such an experienced, well-known and knowledgeable expert with a broad network on board. Håkan will be a valuable contribution in lifting Capacio to a whole new level.

During more than 30 years’ experience in the global forwarding and freight industry, including positions as CIO at TNT Freight Management and Geodis Wilson, Håkan has built a far-reaching expert knowledge and experience in relation to data, IT systems and services, digital innovation and disrupting business models, making him an extraordinary fit and complement to the board of Capacio. In his former positions, Håkan always payed foremost attention to customer satisfaction and orientation while not losing his focus to maximize shareholder value perfectly matching Capacio’s values. His certifications and awards confirm the industry-leading performance and experience, e.g. Best European CEO in the IT Management Logistics Industry 2017 or CIO of the year in 2008.

Zinnovate International to join Capacio Partner Program

In 2013, Håkan established Zinnovate International with a definitive goal in mind: to help large-scale logistic firms realize the full value of their IT investments. Now, Capacio is honored to welcome the company to its Partner Program. The Stockholm-based firm stands out from its peers for its bespoke IT service offerings, which combine efficient business processes with the very latest technological products. Moreover, the company enjoys a global reach through its network of international partners – an added bonus for clients, as the company always stays abreast of the latest technological innovations.

Håkan’s and thus Zinnovate’s vision, pragmatic approaches and success moving forward builds upon three underlying pillars: transformation technology, processes and people. While he has proven to be successful in delivering solution for all of these, Capacio will help Zinnovate in the future through the assessment of executive capacity and abilities in form of cognitive testing to especially excel in the people dimension.

Zinnovate realizing the need and signing up for the Capacio Partner Program to apply Capacio’s services in the logistics industry with millions of employees is a great confirmation of Capacio’s existing, attractive value proposition and offering towards companies, employers and people operating on global scales.

If you or your company is also interested in becoming part of the Capacio Partner Program, send us an email via the contact form on our website.

For additional information and your personal, your team’s or your organization’s assessment, make sure to sign up for our cognitive test as well to learn first about our app release.

There is a lot of things you hear about personality testing, profiling, talent identification and character traits that presumingly tell you whether you are going to be successful in your career – or not. When stumbling across Capacio and their offer to do a free assessment, that is based on neuropsychology, regarding my cognitive and executive capacity I was agreeing to run through their so called “GAME Analysis” being curious but honestly did not expect too much in terms of exciting results.

Having gone through many assessment centers and recruiting procedures with a lot of logic, math, leadership, capability and skills testing I honestly thought I knew it all. I know I am not the very best and fastest when it comes to numbers but above average in terms of data analytics, I am outgoing with leadership traits willing t0 take responsibility and ownership and am equipped with strong social and intercultural skills making me a well-functioning team player especially across hierarchies.

Snap – yes, I was (mostly) right, but was missing a hell lot more about me! Here is the short story of my very own Game Analysis and its cognitive functioning assessment, how I took the test and now know a lot more about myself than I did before.

My name is Pascal, 27 years old, and I am currently enrolled as a Business & Management Master Student at Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). Hoping that people will never stop learning during their life, I currently find myself in a phase of my mid- to end-twenties (yes, slowly approaching 30) willing to take very steep learning curves professionally along the way but most importantly personally as well when it comes to my character, behavior, performance and capabilities.

The acquaintance with Anders Norén (CEO, Capacio) through SSE, was the trigger for me to get curious about Capacio, their offering and their Game Analysis testing, which promises to reveal an individual’s executive capacity, brain processing and functioning abilities and cognitive profile. After informing myself a bit more on their website about what they do, I volunteered and was curious to take the 90-min face-to-face testing. My curiosity was ignited. Expectations not too high. But what did I have to lose?

Testing Day

The test was to be hold face-to-face with a licensed psychologist here in Stockholm and was going to last 90min. Quite a long time for such a test format but not necessarily longer than any other recruiting or personality test I have done before. Given the prior promise of delivering extensive test results the timing seemed to be reasonable.

We were seated on both sides of a small table facing each other. I did have no supporting material on me. No pen, no paper, no calculator. Nothing. This was a bit strange in the beginning, but I accommodated rather quickly once we started.

My tester made sure to slowly explain me everything upfront about the test, what kind of different tests to expect (reading, information processing, creativity, etc.) and what I would have to do in every sequence. If I needed a pen, he would give it to me and so forth.

The tests were as diverse as they could possibly be. Starting with having to read out different given words loudly in a given time frame, eventually having to connect dots in the fastest way possible to naming as many words related to a specific topic in one minute. They all were modified along the way with different levels of difficulty, engagement and interaction. For example, I had to remember and repeat number sequences that the tester would read out loud once. Starting easy with a few numbers, finishing off super difficult with up to 9 different numbers in a row. Sounds challenging? Super challenging!

Was it fun? YES! As I have done a lot of recruiting and screening tests in my life, this was the first time I did exercises like this and honestly, I have to say, they were challenging but extremely exciting after all. It did not feel like a stressful recruiting test but rather like an actual GAME. Super fun and always making me want to run another round!

Also, what I found really interesting was the fact that after every exercise I was asked to judge my own performance in comparison to others on a normal distribution chart. Obviously super hard to judge and I had the feeling I just blindly put a mark somewhere, yet, I realized I never dared to judge myself in the top chunk but rather a bit above average thinking I could not have it done the best way possible. Probably because of my prior experience with results from other profiling tests.

Test Results, my surprising learnings and 3 “wows”

One week after the testing, I met with two licensed psychologists again actually who would guide me through my test results. I honestly was a bit nervous when I entered the room. On the one hand telling myself whatever the test results will be, they will not change me as a person. Either they are crappy with low validity, then I will just forget about them or they are somewhat reasonable, justify what I know already, and I will just take them as a high-level confirmation of my abilities.

However, what happened then was really eye-opening and well exceeded my prior expectations. 3 things generally amazed me already within the first 5 minutes of the test result reporting (see graph below). Since thes3 take-aways sustainably impressed me, I would like to call them my “3 wows”.

Here they are:

1) The detailed qualitative feedback given by a licensed psychologist about my cognitive abilities based on my own, tangible test data.

I was truly amazed, how the psychologists analyzed my test results and qualitatively assessed my test data. Why? They not only interpreted in a very professional way how my brain works, but also translated these findings to my own behavior and potential performance by even daring to predict my future and current management abilities that which were strong in leadership and team building. Something I actually really like to do and what I feel comfortable with. They put so much thought in their assessment and have been extremely detailed and precise. I felt like I was being read out loudly in a very positive way. In the end I was even a bit sad I did not record the feedback because I could have used it exactly in any potential job interview. It had all the answers and statements about me I was always looking for.

For example, that I am an extremely strong strategic thinker that is capable of assessing problems and situation on a meta-level by keeping high cognitive flexibility in a given set of rules. I perform recognizably well with very challenging tasks while being only a bit above average when it comes to daily “boring” problems as my cognitive capabilities basically grow with the size of the problem. How awesome is that? I mean I kind of knew that I get bored easily and lose focus with “no-brainers” like setting up a short excel file about the company’s organization but could dig into questions such as “how should our company look like in 10 years?” for hours without losing track or excitement.

2) The confirmative nature of how precisely the test actually measured who and how I am as a person.

The examples mentioned above have been also the trigger to list my 2nd wow. I am still amazed and excited about how extremely accurate the test results and subsequently the psychologists were able to describe me. As I wrote earlier, I reflected a lot about myself already and know where I am strong and where not. Given, I only fulfilled a few tasks over the course of 90min, the Game Analysis was able to define me just as good as I could after 27 years.

It identified that I am just above average when it comes to multi-processing as I rather enjoy and feel comfortable about delivering 1 or 2 projects to the best extent possible than working on 100 things at the same time not being able to fully put my mind and heart into it. Yet, it assessed my strategic abilities and creative, cognitive flexibility accurately. It even analyzed that I have the maximum potential in these two categories which lies roughly 2 standard deviations above average test results. It also confirmed my process and scanning speed when it comes to analyzing problems, which is also something I got in all of my prior professional feedback sessions. And trust me, even though I’m only 27, there were many!

3) The additional, deep analytics and interpretation as well as different dimensions and angles that the test uses to describe my cognitive profile.

Lastly, and probably this is now the greatest take-away from the results and testing I did with Capacio, the interpretation of the results opened up completely new angles and perspectives in regard to my abilities, cognitive profile and executive capacity I haven’t heard before. Unlike many other tests that only take at the look at a person’s surface aka “yeah we have an extrovert here who likes to take risks”, the Game Analysis really goes deep and revealed way more things and behavioral traits about me that I never knew I wanted to know.

For instance, it showed me that I have a rather average short-term memory, which is true because I sometimes really fail to recall some individual numbers or sentences from a meeting that just happened. But at the same time, it identified that my working memory in comparison is clearly above average. This was interpreted as that once I processed information because I might find it more interesting, appealing or challenging as already described above, I am extremely good in actually working with this information for a long time. The test correctly identified that once I warmed up, nothing can really stop me in terms of productivity and quality. I reach high workflow levels with great abilities to maintain high performance.

And you know what? It’s true. This is exactly how I function in my professional life. I recall days where I started slow, but after half an hour for myself into a problem I did not want to stop and just took more and more of the problem apart ending up with a truly unique solution. Knowing about strengths like these really improves my self-awareness now as I can focus on optimizing my strengths while making sure to compensate more on my weaknesses such as paying more attention to “not-so-important” information pieces. The best part about this? It is evidence-based and proven – scientifically from neuroscience and neuropsychology.

Yet, these were not the only things I learned about me. There were many more such as my high speed, productivity, strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities in times of pressure but in a given set of rules. However, going in to deep would exaggerate this post.

After all, I can say I had prejudices towards Capacio and the related Game Analysis but got proven extremely wrong. Never have test results about myself, my (cognitive) profile and my functional abilities been more useful than this time.

And if you are still in doubt, why don’t you give it a chance and try it yourself. I am sure Capacio will be happy to help!

– Pascal Fischer (27), Stockholm School of Economics (MSc Business & Management)

on May 14th 2o2o

Send us an e-mail for additional information and your personal, your team’s or your organization’s assessment.