How it works / MindFrame
MindFrame draws on psychology, organisational psychology and neuroscience research relevant to people management—how stress, motivation and attention can shape behaviour. We apply these ideas through structured interviews, selected assessments and checks against work examples and feedback.
Alma supports the assessment. MindFrame connects the findings. João's 20 years in recruiting and People leadership turn them into practical guidance for the hiring decision and the relationship that follows.
For hiring, our interviews start with the manager, not the candidate. Understand what the role needs to deliver, how the manager leads and the existing team. The manager and two colleagues are assessed in their own right. Founder diligence starts with the investment context.
Explore values, motivations, habits and less obvious patterns: feedback, status, control, recognition, empathy, credit, blame and team-first choices.
Use real work experiences and pressure or conflict scenarios to understand choices, relationships, speaking up and how others experience the person.
Compare self-description with work examples and feedback. Explore contradictions and what would change our view. Less obvious motives are interpretations checked against choices and evidence, not access to private thoughts.
Examine working habits, expectations and values against the role, manager, team and company. Identify productive differences, likely friction and what needs to change for the relationship to work.
Deliver a clear recommendation, supporting evidence, what to check next and a how-to-work-together plan with practical agreements and first 90-day priorities.
We examine self-promotion, entitlement, credit-sharing, response to criticism and willingness to put team outcomes ahead of personal visibility. Where narcissistic tendencies are a concern, the report describes the behaviour, its evidence and its likely effect at work.
This is a work-focused account of behaviour, not a clinical diagnosis. We examine how someone handles challenge, shares responsibility and makes it safe—or difficult—for others to bring bad news.
Yes. We assess compatibility with the manager, team, role and company. We look at working habits, expectations and values—including differences that can make the team better, and clashes that could make the hiring fail.
Research behind the work
Research informs the questions we ask. Our conclusions depend on the evidence gathered for this person and this situation. These studies do not establish MindFrame's own predictive validity.
Meta-analytic reassessment · Journal of Applied Psychology
Structured interviews ranked highest among the selection procedures studied. Earlier estimates were often overstated.
Sackett et al. · Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range · 2022 ↗Reassessment of validity estimates across personnel-selection procedures.
Meta-analysis · Personnel Psychology
Person–job, person–organisation, person–group and person–supervisor fit were examined as distinct layers associated with work outcomes.
Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman & Johnson · Consequences of individuals’ fit at work: A meta-analysis of person–job, person–organization, person–group, and person–supervisor fit · 2005 ↗172 studies and 836 effect sizes across distinct kinds of fit and work outcomes.
Meta-analytic review · Personnel Psychology
Narcissism was positively associated with leadership emergence, with no overall linear relationship with effectiveness. Self versus other ratings differed.
Grijalva et al. · Narcissism and Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Review of Linear and Nonlinear Relationships · 2015 ↗Leadership emergence and effectiveness; self-ratings and other-ratings examined.
Field study · Administrative Science Quarterly
Team psychological safety was associated with learning behaviour.
Amy Edmondson · Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams · 1999 ↗51 work teams.
Review · Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Uncontrollable stress can affect attention, working memory and flexible thinking.
Amy F. T. Arnsten · Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function · 2009 ↗Research on stress and prefrontal cortex function.
Before the assessment begins, we explain what participation involves, who will receive the findings and how feedback is handled.
The written scope sets out the people, assessment activities, evidence checks, briefing and timing. Your team retains technical and hard-skills assessment. The hiring or investment decision remains yours.
The twelve inquiry themes in the fictional reports are a work-focused adaptation of a broader question bank. Explore them as deeper reading alongside the portraits and working agreements.
Explore use cases