Secure your people decisions

Your heaviest decisions are about people. Make them with a method.

A key hire, a new partner, a succession: 3 cross-checked sources, an expert interview, a signed report in 15 days. The decision stays yours. It becomes defensible.

Book a scoping call → See the 3 formats
3 engagements a month, never more · personal reply within 48 hours
Hugues Souron, founder of Psycomet
Who it is for

For mid-market CEOs, professional services firms and investment funds who put their own accountability behind a people decision.

The Psycomet moment

3 moments when intuition is no longer enough.

3 situations most leaders face at least once a year.

Executive deep in analytical thought about a candidate, hand on chin, looking towards the light
01

You have a doubt about someone.

The CV is spotless, the interview went well, but something is off. You cannot put a name on it. And you have to decide within 15 days.

2 executives sitting back to back, arms crossed, illustrating a leadership team that no longer communicates
02

You inherit a leadership team that does not work.

You can see the friction, but you do not know who is truly in the right seat, who would thrive elsewhere, who simply needs better support. You need an outside reading, calm, owing nothing to history or internal politics.

Executive presenting a structured report to his board, calm and determined
03

You decided on intuition. It cost you.

This time, you want to decide on evidence. With a report that holds up on the table, in the leadership team, in front of your board, in front of your shareholders.

The economics

A failed people decision keeps costing for years.

Management research puts the cost of a bad executive hire at 1.5 to 3 times the annual salary. One of the most expensive decisions a company can get wrong. And one of the least instrumented.

Salary Search Onboarding Exit Team productivity

Psycomet's job is to objectify what instinct alone cannot see, on the decisions where the cost of an error weighs most. Not by guaranteeing success, nobody can. By documenting the decision in case it is challenged, and by surfacing the signals you might have missed.

Industry estimates: SHRM, Center for Creative Leadership. Figures vary by role, sector and tenure, and the methodologies remain debated: the order of magnitude is what matters. US studies focused mainly on executive management, to be applied with care to the European mid-market.

Aligned, calm team at work
The other side

A sound decision does more than avoid a mistake. It unlocks a team.

The right person in the right seat, a duo that works, a leader aligned with the phase of their company: these are the silent conditions of performance. They do not show up on a dashboard, yet everything depends on them.

Psycomet does not promise a number, nobody honestly can. It secures the people decisions on which everything else then depends.

The deliverable

One report.
Decisions.

Priority decisions first, then a plain-language reading of the 7 dimensions. A signed, defensible decision report, ready for the board.

Psycomet
PSYCOMET HRS report
Confidential
Priority decisions
01Decide within 30 days on the CFO's positioning.
02Strengthen the Sales / Operations duo.
03Frame the Industrial Director's succession.
Reading by dimension
Relationships
Clarity
Security
Regulation
Vision
Adaptability
Alignment
Psycomet HRS summary
Priority decisions
01Decide within 30 days on the CFO's positioning.
02Strengthen the Sales / Operations duo.
03Frame the Industrial Director's succession.
Summary reading
Strong on Security, Relationships and Vision. Point of attention on conflict Regulation, to explore in a follow-up interview.
Ready to share with the board · 2 pages
The HRS™ method

3 sources,
triangulated.

A single data source is reductive. A single expert opinion is subjective. Triangulating psychometric data, systemic data and human expertise, a protocol borrowed from the social sciences, produces the reading no single source can offer.

HRS PSYCHO DATA SYSTEMIC DATA EXPERTISE
  1. 01Psychometric data
  2. 02Systemic data
  3. 03Human expertise
  4. 04HRS triangulation
01

Psychometric data.

Scientifically validated predictive instruments: AssessFirst (20 years of R&D, 100,000+ assessments a year). Hugues is a certified AssessFirst Expert. Stable, comparable, reproducible data.

02

Systemic data.

A reading of the strategic context, the operational stakes, the balance of power. What a test never sees: the situation around the person.

03

Human expertise.

A 90-minute structured conversation led by Hugues. Where a human says what no data captures. Verification, nuance, warning.

04

HRS triangulation.

No source decides alone. The reading only holds on the crossing of all three, a protocol borrowed from the social sciences. That crossing, and it alone, produces a reasoned, defensible decision.

Client feedback

What they took away from the method.

Leaders who secured a key decision, and assessed people on the accuracy of the diagnosis and the quality of the crossing between psychometrics and interview.

COO hire secured

As a CEO, my riskiest decisions are my key hires. Hugues and Psycomet gave me a reading that neither my intuition nor a CV provided: a cross-analysis that secures the choice and then shows how to manage the person day to day. On our COO hire, his work weighed directly in my final decision. If you decide on strategic profiles, talk to him.

Grégoire von Rakowski
Grégoire von Rakowski CEO · Kamino Sport LinkedIn →
21 employees mapped

I am the HR lead of an organisation with 21 employees. Working with Psycomet really helped us understand how our people operate, adjust everyone's role and the way we collaborate.

Edwige de Champs
Edwige de Champs Head of France · Fondacio LinkedIn →
Method validated for his assignments

Psycomet's offer is relevant, very well documented by the tests, simple yet detailed to read and immediately usable for decision-making. I appreciated the clear format, its variables, and the final touch on what to do and what not to do. I highly recommend it.

Rémi Grozdoff
Rémi Grozdoff Interim manager · B2B P&C insurance LinkedIn →
An executive's path clarified

Hugues had me take the psychometrics with no particular context. The report described with striking accuracy what my job is made of today: an appetite for complexity, arbitration under pressure, technical credibility. This method could clarify many careers before they are built.

Laura Darroman
Laura Darroman Head of Financial Lines Claims France · WTW LinkedIn →
Internal tensions named

Hugues does not apply a ready-made grid. He starts from the psychometric instruments, crosses them with a well-run interview, and manages to name the key tensions. More than simple support, I felt a real partnership.

Thibaut Le Bos
Thibaut Le Bos Business Analyst · Rolex LinkedIn →
A career path clarified

I expected one more psychometric test. What came out was an accurate reading of what truly suits me, accurate enough to draw concrete decisions about the next step of my career.

Mathieu Pelous
Mathieu Pelous Engineer · Construction LinkedIn →
A physician's path clarified

I was impressed by the precision and accuracy with which his method captured what makes me want to work and enjoy it, with extremely concrete advice on the directions to take. It gave me a huge boost of motivation.

Pierre-Antoine Le Bos
Pierre-Antoine Le Bos Cardiologist · Paris Doctor profile →
5.0 out of 5 · 18 verifiable Google reviews See all reviews on Google
→
Approach

3 ways
to work together.

One method. 3 levels of intensity, depending on the stakes.

For 1 person · 15 days · a defensible decision

Individual assessment.

Secure a decision that rests on 1 person. In 15 days. A prospective executive, a potential partner, a key candidate for a decisive role.

15 days 1 person HRS report + 1-hour debrief
See tier 1 in detail
Executive assessed individually, in a professional setting
15 days to decide
Deliverable: HRS report + 1 hour of strategic debrief with you.
For 1 team · 20 to 30 days · defensible decisions

Team diagnostic.

Read a whole team: an inherited leadership team, a partner duo, an agency in transition, founders before a fundraise. The decisions to make within 6 months.

20 to 30 days 3 to 12 people 6-month plan included
See tier 2 in detail
Leadership team collaborating, engaged discussion around a decision
30 days to map
Deliverable: 10 to 15-page report + 6-month decision plan.
For 1 organisation · 3 to 9 months · continuous steering

Ongoing programme.

Make the HRS a lasting practice: steering, reassessment at month 3 and month 6, decision follow-up on the structuring decisions.

3 to 9 months 90-day plan Reassessment included
See tier 3 in detail
Whole organisation gathered at an internal event with a plenary session
9 months to steer
Deliverable: 90-day plan, checkpoints at month 3 and month 6, final audit.
Commitment guarantee. Secured decisions, or I keep working until you have them, at no extra charge.
0,51
predictive validity of the structured interview (Schmidt & Hunter), 1 of the 3 cross-checked HRS sources
100 000+
AssessFirst assessments a year, 20 years of R&D
100%
of engagements led personally by Hugues Souron
5
validated scientific foundations, 40 to 80 years old
The scientific foundations

5 validated academic building blocks, one method.

Psycomet did not invent psychometrics. The HRS triangulates instruments proven over 40 to 80 years, and adds what they lack: the systemic context and the qualified interview. These are the foundations the HRS rests on.

  1. I

    Big Five (OCEAN model)

    Costa & McCrae · National Institutes of Health · 1980 to 1990 · worldwide academic consensus

    The only robust personality model accepted by science. Predictive validity 0.30 to 0.50.

    The dominant model in contemporary personality psychology: 5 continuous traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Emotional stability). Its predictive validity for job performance is measured at 0.30 to 0.50 (Schmidt & Hunter meta-analyses, 85 years of cumulative selection research). It is today the only robust personality model accepted in the reference scientific literature.

    Operationalised at Psycomet through AssessFirst, where Hugues is a certified Expert.

  2. II

    Self-determination theory (intrinsic motivation)

    Deci & Ryan · University of Rochester · 1985 · validated in 80+ countries

    3 universal needs. Met, performance lasts. Ignored, even a brilliant profile fades.

    The dominant theory of human motivation in work psychology. It posits 3 fundamental, universal psychological needs: autonomy, competence, relatedness. When the context meets these 3 needs, performance and engagement last. When it does not, the person fades, however brilliant at the start.

    Crossed at Psycomet with the real context of the role: motivation is not assessed in a vacuum, we look at whether the proposed environment feeds it or starves it.

  3. III

    Systemic reading of the context

    Edgar Schein · MIT Sloan · Argyris & Schön · Harvard · Palo Alto School

    What no individual test sees: the balance of power around the person.

    Founding work on organisational culture (Schein), organisational learning and theories of action (Argyris & Schön), and the systemic reading of interactions (Bateson, Watzlawick, Palo Alto School). What no individual test ever captures: the situation around the person, the balance of power, the games people play, the coherence or contradictions of the system that receives them.

    Built into Psycomet through a preliminary strategic brief with the sponsor and a systematic contextual analysis grid before any interview.

  4. IV

    Structured behavioural interview

    Janz · Behavior Description Interview · 1982 · Geoff Smart · ghSMART · Topgrading

    The structured interview is the top-ranked predictor in recent meta-analyses, far ahead of free-form conversation. 1 of the 3 HRS sources.

    The structured behavioural interview (standardised questions about lived situations, anchored in observable professional history) is the top-ranked predictor in selection research: a validity of about 0.51 in the founding Schmidt & Hunter meta-analysis (1998), revised to about 0.42 by Sackett et al. (2022), far ahead of free-form conversation. It is the best-documented lever for reducing the bias of the improvised interview.

    A 90-minute Psycomet conversation led by Hugues on a protocol grid. Where a human says what no data captures: verification, nuance, warning.

  5. V

    Methodological triangulation

    Denzin · 1978 · Lincoln & Guba · 1985 · epistemological principle of the social sciences

    A single source is suspect. 3 converging sources validate the reading.

    In qualitative research, the validity of a reading rests on the convergence of several independent sources: data, methods, observers. A single source remains suspect. 3 converging sources validate the reading. This principle, codified by Denzin and then Lincoln & Guba, now structures all qualitative research in the social sciences.

    The founding principle of the HRS: psychometric data (I + II) + systemic data (III) + human expertise (IV). No source decides alone. The reading only holds on their crossing.

The HRS did not invent psychometrics. It instruments it with the best the literature offers, augments it with the context no test reads, qualifies it through the structured interview, and triangulates the whole to produce a reasoned decision.

Not sure yet?

No decision to present yet?

A 20-minute call is enough to tell whether your situation warrants instrumenting a high-stakes people decision. Free, no commitment.

Book the 20-minute call →
Free · 20 minutes · personal reply within 48 hours
The practice

The person who signs your report is the person who runs the engagement.

Every engagement is led personally by Hugues Souron, founder and president of Psycomet. The HRS method is architected with Laurent Chrétien, an École Polytechnique engineer. Arthur Jouffe, a specialist in Bayesian and causal modelling, brings probabilistic rigour to the engagements where the impact of a decision has to be anticipated.

Hugues Souron
Hugues Souron
Founder and president

Nearly 10 years in insurance risk management (AIG, L'Oréal, SIACI, Verlingue, Abeille). Certified AssessFirst Expert. Lecturer in psychometrics at Paris-Dauphine and Excelia.

Laurent Chrétien
Laurent Chrétien
Scientific architect
of the HRS method

École Polytechnique engineer. Scientific partner. Guardian of the method's statistical architecture.

Arthur Jouffe
Arthur Jouffe
Causal modelling
of people decisions

Specialist in Bayesian and causal modelling, certified BayesiaLab Advanced. Works on the engagements where the impact of a decision has to be anticipated: psychosocial risks, turnover, organisational action plans.

Clarification

What Psycomet
is not.

Not
A headhunting firm.
Not
Executive coaching.
Not
An online psychometric test.
Not
A standard anonymous 360.

Psycomet does one thing: instrument the people decision you have to make, and make it defensible.

Frequently asked questions

Everything you need to know.

How are you different from an HR consultancy or a coach?+
An HR consultancy equips processes. A coach supports execution. Psycomet instruments the decision itself. The HRS method crosses psychometric data, systemic data and human expertise to deliver a decision report, not an audit to work through. The goal: actionable decisions you can sign and defend in front of your board.
How much of my time does it take, as the decision-maker?+
For you (the leader who commissions the report): a 20-minute scoping call at the start + 1 hour of strategic debrief at delivery to take ownership of the summary. For each person assessed: 30 minutes to complete AssessFirst online, at their own pace. If the assessment includes an individual clinical interview, add 3 hours with me in 2 sessions of 90 minutes. For a diagnostic centred on the context rather than on individual profiles, we stop at the questionnaires. Logistics, questionnaires and feedback are handled for you.
What is your guarantee?+
Commitment guarantee. If, at the end of the engagement, you do not have secured decisions on the table, I keep working with you at no extra charge until you do. Systematic scoping upfront to make sure there is something to decide.
How do you guarantee confidentiality and GDPR compliance?+
An NDA is signed before every scoping. A GDPR article 22 clause is included in the contract: the HRS informs the decision, it does not make it. Explicit consent from every participant before any assessment. Data and reports kept for 24 months after delivery, then destroyed. The retention period can be contracted to your requirements. Reports are encrypted and handed over in person or through a secure channel.
How long does an engagement take?+
Individual assessment: 15 days. Team diagnostic: 20 to 30 days depending on scope. Ongoing programme: 3 to 9 months, with an initial pilot of 3 to 6 weeks. After reading your brief, the 20-minute scoping call sizes the right format for your situation.
What if my teams do not want to take the tests?+
Explicit consent before every assessment, never imposed. Most participants actually say thank you for the quality of the individual debrief offered as part of the process: it is rare for someone to devote 90 minutes to them alone. If someone declines, we adapt the scope. The final decision always remains yours.
Ready to see clearly?

Bring me your next people decision.

A personal reply within 48 hours, then a 20-minute scoping call, not a pitch. 3 engagements a month, never more: if Psycomet is not the right tool, I tell you and point you elsewhere. A named proposal after scoping.

Commitment guarantee. Secured decisions, or I keep working until you have them, at no extra charge.
Book a scoping call →