In “A Conversation with the Founder”, Johan Hanwin of Cohr Group – a global Swedish born consultancy pushing the boundaries of human capital performance with AI – takes us through the journey of his career and how the company came about.
You started Cohr Group 22 years ago, what was the inspiration behind that decision?
I was working at KornFerry & Futurestep as I was heading the assessment in Sweden in 2001 as part of their Global Assessment team. They did a market analysis of the global assessment market through an American consultancy called Monitor and the outcome was a segmentation of three dominating categories: Recruitment companies like themselves, test suppliers, and the lonely psychologist and his dog. Well, the latter was me and so I got started with Cohr Group.
In your opinion what are the biggest changes you have seen – both internally within the company and externally in the markets?
The greatest change and, partly disrupting the assessment industry, is the gradual take-over conducting digital testing online, which is mainly related to scale and grow like a Saas playbook-model. So, digital tests mean less imposition and the old way of assessing, by being a full-fledged evaluator of humans in face-to-face meetings, have seriously decreased in the last decade. Evolution some say, adapting to the Tech giants-logics others say.
Were these changes what led to the inspiration behind Cohr Group’s predictive analytics platform “CohrEx”?
It definitely was and what we have tried is to emphasize the cross-scientific aspect of how to get the in-data right. Through our AI-modeling we can predict to a totally new level in comparison with the global competition.
In the next 5 years, where do you see Cohr Group?
In the best-case realistic scenario, we are continuing our growth globally by disrupting the assessment industry.
Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing?
I am an energetic person who does my best to regulate my inner neurobiological functioning, so everything truly optimizes this process e.g. exercising, good red wine and exploring the combination of reality, curiosity and spontaneity in order to have the highest state of mind!