猎头经验 － 利用面试来为你的候选人辩护（译）

3月21日

http://www.adlerconcepts.com/

by Lou Adler, The Adler Group (March 21, 2006 at 08:41 AM)

如果你曾经向招聘团队推荐优秀人才，却由于种种愚蠢的理由最终告吹，你就该学着如何为你的申请人辩护。

某种程度上，你要提供具体的证据来对抗由于情感、偏见、直觉或者过于狭窄的专业技能和能力所做出的决定。很多优秀的人因为错误的原因被拒绝，而这样的选择却没有充分证据来证实。很多一般人因为有出色的面试技巧就因感觉、偏见和直觉被录取了。

你可以采取一些行动更好地为你的候选人辩护：

1. 了解工作。在你开始找人之前，问清招聘经理，他需要怎样做才算成功。让经理定义他将要处理的主要项目和挑战。然后请经理描述优秀人才与普通人相比如何更好的完成同样的任务。我把这些文档称作绩效概况。通过与类似职位上最佳员工的沟通，事先准备好大致的绩效概况，找出他们与普通员工的区别。这样，你只须让招聘经理修改你的绩效概况，而不是从头来过。事先花大量时间准备绩效概况，是证明你对工作的了解也会为你的团队合作加分。
2. 成为好的面试官。你要成为比招聘经理客户更好的面试官，如果你希望为你的候选人辩护以免受到肤浅和狭隘的评估。一种办法是获得与绩效概况中描述的相关成就的实例。如果你花了至少十分钟挖掘候选人的最大的团队、与工作相关的个人成就，你会掌握充分的证据克服一般化和有缺陷的评估。从技术方面，很多面试官挖掘了一些与工作无关的方面，所以一定要通过直接联系实际工作需要，考察候选人明显的技术不足。
3. 利用外部证据。全副武装地为你的候选人辩护。利用测试结果、深入的证明书和各种候选人杰出工作的证书。指向快速提升、特别红利、奖励和加薪作为他杰出成绩的证据。
4. 不要把反对当作答案。这是招聘者的咒语。很多人不需要所有的证据就枉下论断。招聘者需要对抗这种基于少量信息马上判断个人能力的倾向。除非招聘团队有足够严格的证据做出好的决定，你就要一直为候选人辩护，如果你认为对他的评价不公。
5. 利用"紧抓不放"的销售术。即使你没有现成的证据为候选人辩护，也要保证能够提供，以此挽回招聘经理的决定。“如果我能提供更进一步的证据证明候选人比你最初的评价好，你能否至少再考虑一下，把你的判断推迟几天？”当然，你最好能找到证据。
6. 组织更多专门小组面试。如果你是好的面试官，为什么不组织专门小组面试呢？这样的话，每个人都能听到同样的信息。通过在面试中深入挖掘候选人杰出成绩的例子，其他面试官也更多地了解了候选人。关键是有一个人支持面试会议，由其他小组成员对细节和例子提问。如果你在面试房间里，为什么不主持面试？这样你就能保证候选人的成就被每个人清楚地了解。
7. 指导经理如何正确面试。如果你能教经理如何改善他们的面试技巧，你会立刻被公认为行业的专家、招聘团队的无价之宝。你可以考虑用我推荐的基于绩效的面试流程。
8. 主持报告会议。为了保证表面的信息不被用来排除或录用候选人，招聘者必须出席报告会议。集体判断是评估能力的好方法，如果每个与会者都提出严格证据。不幸的是，事实往往并非如此。通常，领导者的意见成为主导，或者一到两个人的意见盖过了其他人的反对意见。为了防止这种现象，最好由招聘者主持报告会议，保证所有的证据都被客观地考虑。

做到以上描述的每一步很可能要在每个候选人身上多花2-3个小时。对于3个候选人，这些总共要多花一天的时间作调查。然而，如果三人中的一个被录用了，你就不必从头再做一遍调查。反复的调查要多花一到两周时间，这些时间可以用于新的搜寻、联网、电话联络、筛选和招聘等等。

学会如何为候选人辩护可以把你的工作效率提高50-100%。我觉得很划算。原理就是：找对资料事半功倍。

If you've ever had a good person you've presented to the hiring team get blown away for stupid reasons, you've got to learn how to defend your candidates.

At one level this requires that you present concrete evidence to fight decisions made on emotions, biases, intuition or a too-narrow range of technical skills and competencies. Too many good people get excluded for the wrong reasons when evidence is not used to justify the selection. Too many average people with great interviewing skills get hired when feelings, prejudices and intuition override judgment.

Here are some things you can do to get started on better defending your candidates:

1. • Know the job. Before you start looking for candidates, ask the hiring manager what the person needs to do to be considered successful. Have the manager define the key projects and challenges the person is expected to handle. Then ask the manager to describe how better people handle these same tasks compared to average people. I call these types of documents performance profiles. Prepare a preliminary performance profile ahead of time by talking to the best people you've placed in similar positions and find out what they did differently than the average performer. This way, you can ask the hiring manager to modify your preliminary performance profile rather than starting from scratch. Doing most of the work to prepare a performance profile ahead of time demonstrates solid job knowledge and will earn you some potential partnership points.
     
     
   • Become a good interviewer. You'll need to be a better interviewer than your hiring manager clients if you expect to defend your candidates from superficial or narrow assessments. One way to do this is to get detailed examples of major accomplishments related to those described in the performance profile. If you spend at least 10 minutes digging into the candidate's biggest team, job-related and individual accomplishments, you'll have plenty of evidence to overcome generalizations and flawed assessments. On the tech side, too many interviewers dig into areas unrelated to real job needs, so be sure to challenge your candidate's apparent lack of technical depth by relating it directly to the real job requirements.
     
     
   • Use more outside evidence. Don't defend your candidates half-armed. Use test results, in-depth references and multiple examples of recognition which the candidate received for doing outstanding work. Point to early promotions, special bonuses, awards and raises as evidence of exceptional performance.
     
     
   • Don't take no for an answer. This is the recruiter's mantra. Too many people make decisions without all the available evidence. A recruiter needs to fight the tendency to judge competency too soon based on minimal information. Unless the hiring team has enough hard and fast evidence to make a good decision, you'll need to continue fighting for your candidate if you believe the person is being judged unfairly.
     
     
   • Use the "close upon an objection" sales technique. Even if you don't have ready proof to defend your candidate, use the promise of getting it as a way of keeping the hiring manager open-minded. "If I could present further evidence that the candidate is far stronger than your initial assessment, would you at least reconsider it and postpone your judgment for a few days?" Of course, then you better get the proof.
     
     
   • Lead more panel interviews. If you're a good interviewer, why not lead a panel interview? This way, everyone hears the same information. By digging deep and getting examples of major accomplishments during the interview, the other interviewers learn more about the candidate than they would have on their own. The key is to have one person lead the interview session, with the other panel members asking for clarification and examples. If you're in the room, why not lead the interview? This way, you can be sure your candidate's accomplishments are clearly understood by everyone involved.
     
     
   • Coach your managers to interview properly. If you can teach your managers how to improve their interviewing skills, you're instantly recognized as an expert in your field and an invaluable member of the hiring team. You might want to consider using the performance-based interviewing process I recommend as part of this.
     
     
   • Lead the debriefing session. To ensure that superficial information is not used to eliminate (or hire) a person, it's vital that the recruiter be present during the debriefing session. The collective judgment of the group is a valid means to assess competency if everyone involved presents hard evidence. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Usually the dominant person's opinion prevails or the concerns of one or two people overshadow the positive judgment of others. To prevent this, it's best if the recruiter leads the debriefing session to ensure that all the evidence is considered in an objective manner.

Doing everything described above probably takes 2-3 additional hours per final candidate. For a slate of three candidates, this collectively adds an additional day's work to the search. However, if one of the three candidates gets hired, you won't have to do the search over again. Doing searches over again can take another one to two weeks worth of sourcing, networking, cold-calling, screening, recruiting, etc.

Learning how to defend your candidate's is how you increase your productivity by 50-100%. To me that's a pretty good trade-off. Here's the principle involved here: get better at the right stuff, not more efficient at the wrong stuff.