評論
打印
Business
商業版塊
Bartleby
巴托比專欄
Soft skills, hard questions
軟技能，大難題
The hiring process is not well designed to select for social aptitude.
招聘流程的設計并不能選拔出社交能力強的人。
Soft skills matter to employers.
軟技能對雇主很重要。
Writing in the Harvard Business Review last year, Raffaella Sadun of Harvard Business School and her co-authors analysed almost 5,000 job descriptions that Russell Reynolds, a headhunter, had developed for a variety of C-suite roles between 2000 and 2017.
哈佛商學院的拉斐拉·薩登和她的合著者去年在《哈佛商業評論》上撰文，分析了獵頭公司羅盛咨詢在2000年至2017年間，對各種高管職位的近5000份職位描述。
Their work showed that companies have shifted away from emphasising financial and operational skills towards social skills—an ability to listen, reflect, communicate and empathise.
薩登的研究表明，企業已經從強調財務和運營技能轉向了強調社交技能：傾聽、反思、溝通和共情的能力。
Other research has reached similar conclusions about jobs lower down the pay scale: being able to work well with people is seen not as some fluffy bonus but as a vital attribute.
其他研究調查了薪資水平更低的工作，也得出了類似的結論：能與他人良好合作并不被視為某種沒有實際用途的額外優點，而是一種至關重要的品質。
The trouble is that soft skills are hard to measure.
問題在于，軟技能很難衡量。
Worse still, the conventional process for recruiting people is often better at picking up on other qualities.
更糟糕的是，傳統的招聘流程往往更善于捕捉到其他品質。
The early phases of recruitment focus on filtering candidates based on their experiences and hard skills, since these are the criteria that are easiest to assess at a distance.
招聘的初步階段側重于根據應聘者的經驗和硬技能來篩選候選人，因為這些是最容易進行遠距離評估的標準。
Putting the words “team player” on a cover letter or a CV is proof of nothing save unoriginality.
在求職信或簡歷上寫上“擅長團隊合作”這幾個字只能證明你毫無創意。
Smiling a lot at a camera for a taped video message demonstrates mainly that you can smile a lot at a camera.
錄制視頻介紹時，對著攝像機不停微笑主要證明了你確實可以對著攝像機不停微笑。
Self-reported empathy questionnaires sometimes seem to be testing for species-level traits (if you agree that “In emergency situations I feel apprehensive and ill at ease”, many congratulations: you are a human).
自我測評的共情能力問卷有時候像是在測試你是否有人類的物種特征(如果你同意“在緊急情況下，我感到焦慮和不安”，那么恭喜你：你是人類)。
The later phases of recruitment, when candidates and employers meet each other and engage in actual conversation, are better suited to assessing an applicant’s softer skills.
招聘的后期階段，應聘者和雇主見面并真正交談，這時才更適合評估應聘者的軟技能。
But even then, think of how fundamentally unsocial the situation is.
但即便如此，請想一想，這種情境本質上是多么地不適合社交。
Candidates are expected to talk, not listen; to impress, not empathise.
候選人應該表達，而不是傾聽，應該讓人印象深刻，而不是與他人共情。
Firms are feted for asking interviewees oh-so-clever Fermi questions like “How many piano-tuners are there in Guangdong?” or “How many cinnamon swirls would it take to fill the Reichstag?”
公司會因為問面試者一些看似聰明的費米問題而受到稱贊，比如“廣東有多少鋼琴調音師？”或者“需要多少肉桂卷才能填滿德國國會大廈？”。
Structured interview scripts enable like-for-like comparisons but they also squeeze the space for spontaneity.
結構化面試問卷可以進行同類比較，但也擠壓了自由發揮的空間。
No wonder Professor Sadun et al reckon that hiring processes need to get a lot better at winkling out social skills.
因此薩登教授等人認為招聘流程需要在發掘社交技能方面有所改進，這也不足為奇了。
Research is finding some shortcuts for identifying softer skills.
研究人員正在尋找一些識別軟技能的捷徑。
Two recent studies of what makes for a good team member converge on what might be described as an ability to read the room.
最近兩項研究探索了擅長團隊合作的人有何特點，這兩項研究的結果都落到了一種可以被描述為“閱讀周圍氣氛”的能力上。
They also suggest ways to test for this trait.
他們還提出了測試這一特征的方法。
Research by Siyu Yu of Rice University and her co-authors found that people who can accurately gauge which members of a team wield influence are in possession of a magic power they call “status acuity”.
萊斯大學的于思雨和她的合著者發現，能夠準確判斷團隊中哪些成員擁有影響力的人，擁有一種他們稱之為“地位敏銳度”的神奇能力。
Such room-readers reduce group conflict and improve team performance.
這樣的氣氛閱讀者能減少群體沖突，提高團隊表現。
As part of their study they devised a test, in which participants watched a video of a group performing a task.
作為研究的一部分，他們設計了一項測試，讓參與者觀看一組人執行任務的視頻。
The participants then rated members of the group based on how much esteem each was held in.
然后，參與者對小組成員受人尊重的程度進行評級。
People whose ratings were closest to the assessments of the team members themselves had the quality of status acuity.
評級最接近小組成員自己的評估結果的人具有地位敏銳度。
In another study Ben Weidman and David Deming of Harvard University also found that certain individuals consistently made their groups perform better than expected.
在另一項研究中，哈佛大學的本·魏德曼和大衛·戴明也發現，某些人總是能讓他們的團隊表現得比預期的要好。
Such people, they argued, are genuine team players, capable of making the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
他們認為，這樣的人是真正的擅長團隊合作的人，能夠產生一加一大于二的效果。
These wonderful creatures did not stand out from their peers on IQ or personality tests.
這些很棒的人在智商或性格測試中并沒有脫穎而出。
But they did significantly better on the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test, a standardised assessment in which participants are shown pictures of various facial expressions and then have to pick the word that best describes what each person is feeling.
但他們在“根據眼神讀心”的測試中表現要好很多，這種測試是一種標準化的評估方法，參與者會看到不同面部表情的圖片，然后選擇最能描述這個人的感受的詞語。
Better tests are not the only way to elicit more information about social skills.
更準確的測試并不是獲取更多關于社交技能的信息的唯一途徑。
Don’t just have people higher up the food chain ask interview questions: it is good to see how applicants get on with a range of colleagues.
不要只是讓位于食物鏈高處的人問一些面試問題，看看應聘者與各種同事相處得如何也是一個好辦法。
Ask the people who interact casually with applicants, from the assistants who arrange appointments to the receptionists on the day, what they thought of them.
問一下那些與應聘者有過隨意接觸的人，包括安排面試的助理和當天的前臺，問問他們對應聘者有什么看法。
Find out what genuinely worries candidates about the job: lots of research suggests that humility is associated with better performance.
找出應聘者對這份工作真正擔心的是什么，許多研究表明，謙遜與更好的表現有關。
Hiring for soft skills will spawn new risks.
雇人時注重軟技能也會產生新的風險。
They are squishier than technical skills, which may make it easier for people to fake their way through the process.
軟技能比技術能力更難以捉摸，人們更容易在整個應聘過程中假裝有軟技能。
And there may be more room for interviewers’ biases to creep in.
面試官也更有可能不自覺地產生偏見。
Finding someone irritating may be a signal that someone lacks social skills.
發現某人令人討厭可能是這個人缺乏社交技能的信號。
But it may also mean that they are nervous, that you are grumpy or that the two of you are not that alike.
但也可能意味著他們很緊張，或者你太暴躁，或者你們兩個不是一類人。
Recruitment is set to change. It is not going to get easier.
招聘方式勢必會發生變化，而且絕不會變得更簡單。
