【中英双语】终身学习者，就是最佳人才
Identify — and Hire — Lifelong Learners
在疫情的推波助澜下，人才管理已经历一次巨变。人们以前所未见的迫切程度，采用各种工作环境、商业优先要务和新科技。在美国，招聘与到职已成为多半采远距进行的活动。2020年1月，在新冠肺炎变成大流行疫情之前，世界经济论坛（World Economic Forum）就呼吁全球进行培养新技能的革命，现在公司要求员工具备不同技能，包括复原力、顺应力、数字化能力、设计及人际技能。
Talent management has undergone a massive overhaul, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Working environments, business priorities, and new technologies have been adopted with prodigious urgency. Hiring and onboarding have become substantially remote activities. In January 2020 — before Covid had even become a pandemic — the World Economic Forum called for a global reskilling revolution, and firms now require different skills of their workforces, including resilience, adaptability, digital, design, and interpersonal skills.
这些改变对求职者与雇主同样都是挑战。但我相信，有个简单的方法，可以带来亟须的清晰与指引。这个方法能为员工的整个工作周期增添价值，从雇用到绩效管理，全都包括在内。
These changes have been a challenge for job candidates and employers alike. But I believe that there’s a simple way to bring some much-needed clarity and guidance — one which adds value all the way along the employee lifecycle, from hiring to managing performance.
秘诀就是问人们一个简单的问题：你是如何学习的？
The secret is to ask of people a simple question: How do you learn?
这不是要了解简单的学习偏好（像是作息表与学习模式），也不是要知道不再受人追捧的学习风格（例如视觉或听觉学习者）。这是关于一个人在更新、改善及分享自己的知识与技能时，所用的个人系统。你考虑招聘的求职者，是否有这样的系统？同样地，你自己有吗？
This is not about simplistic learning preferences (such as schedules and modalities) or broadly discredited learning styles (such as being a visual or aural learner). This is about an individual’s personal system for updating, improving, and sharing her knowledge and skills. Does the job candidate you’re considering have such a system? And, for that matter, do you?
这或许是最适合向在职及未来员工提出的一个问题。影响个人未来表现的因素，不仅包括过去的成就与资质，同样也包括高品质、系统化与刻意地培养技能，而过去的成就与资质，正是传统上面试时的重点。因此，公司能力与大部分的价值，来自本身工作人才的集体技能。
This may be the most pertinent question one can ask of a current or future employee. Future performance of the individual is just as much a function of high-caliber, systematic, intentional skills development as it is of past achievements and qualifications, the traditional fare of job interviews. And the capability and much of the value of a company is, in turn, a function of the collective skills of its workforce.
终身学习，现今大致被视为经济要务（economic imperative），以及唯一可永续维持的竞争优势。求职者和员工若能考虑、更新，并改善本身的技能，就能创造高绩效，尤其从长期来看，就是如此。强迫我们思考自己学习的方式，能务实地强化那个重要却模糊的“成长心态”（growth mindset）概念。
Lifelong learning is now roundly considered to be an economic imperative and “the only sustainable competitive advantage.” Job candidates and employees who consider, update, and improve their skills are the high performers, especially over the longer term. Pressing ourselves on the question of how we learn brings a hard, pragmatic edge to the important but nebulous notion of growth mindset.
让我们考虑把这个问题，运用到员工的工作生命周期两个关键阶段：招聘与绩效管理。
Let’s consider the question’s application to two key stages of the employee lifecycle: hiring and performance management.
招聘与求职
假设我们在筛选面试者阶段，提出前述那个问题。如果能提出令人信服的答案，也许就表示回答的人具有高度的好奇心、组织力及方法运用能力。
Hiring and getting hired
Suppose the question were asked by default during the screening process. Convincing answers would indicate high levels of curiosity, organization, and method.
身为招聘经理：
As a hiring manager:
• 务必要对学习的定义，抱持包容和开放的态度。部分做法是要能体会文化及个人的差异；同时要知道，现在有非常多内容可以学习，像是课程、书籍、他人、诗歌、提升绩效的工具、歌曲、影片、对话、观察、反省、回忆等。求职者如何理解所有这些内容？他如何处理内容超载的问题？他如何选择最相关的内容，再加以分割并消化，以改善自己的长期成就感与绩效水准？
Take care to be inclusive and open-minded about what counts as learning. This is partly to be able to appreciate cultural and personal differences. It’s also to recognize that there is a dizzying proliferation of content from which one can learn: courses, books, people, poems, performance support tools, songs, films, conversations, observations, reflections, memories, and more. How does the candidate go about making sense of all of this? How does she face up to content overload? How does she select what’s most relevant and then slice, dice, and digest it in a way that improves her feeling of fulfillment and level of performance over the long term?
• 询问求职者最近学到的东西，以及如何将这些东西，运用到他应征的职务上。
Ask the candidate about something they’ve recently learned and how they could apply it in the role for which you are considering them.
• 准备好求职者会问你相同的问题。要展现出你很清楚公司认为，哪些技能具有特别高的价值，这通常涵盖了二十到一百项技能、行为与价值观。
Be prepared to have the same question be asked of you. Show an awareness of the skills deemed to be of particularly high value at the firm — this is typically a list of 20 to 100 skills, behaviors, and values, defined with care.
身为求职者：
As a candidate:
• 询问公司的学习文化及学习设施。这有助于更了解你可能会任职的环境，并有助于你向未来雇主展现你的学习兴趣。
Ask about the learning culture and facilities for learning at the firm. This will help understand more about the environment you may be walking into, and will help demonstrate your interest in learning to your prospective employer.
• 别等别人来问你如何学习。在对话当中的适当时机，主动提出有说服力的答案。
Don’t wait to be asked about how you learn. Volunteer your convincing answer at the right moment in the conversation.
• 准备好回答招聘经理提出上述任何问题。
Be prepared to answer any and all of the above questions for hiring managers.
绩效管理
Performance management
“你如何学习？”这个问题，也能在绩效评估流程中带来收获。除了评估并奖励过去的绩效，实施得当的绩效评量，能找到员工的技能缺口来补强，并找出员工的长处来强化。追求进步的雇主，会安排适当的学习内容，让员工能做到前述这两点，并搭配提供数字技术，以便把适当的学习内容，分配给适合的学员。他们也可以把上述问题纳入绩效管理软件，好让所有人都必须回答这个问题。这个问题往往引导到下一项评量的谈话：那么你学到了什么？
The question “How do you learn?” can also reap rewards in the appraisal process. As well as assessing and rewarding past performance, a properly conducted appraisal will identify skills gaps to close and strengths to reinforce. And the progressive employer will have curated the right learning content to achieve this for their workforce, along with intelligent technologies to distribute the right learning to the right learner. They may also incorporate the question into performance management software, so it is fully embedded for everyone. The question usefully tees up the conversation for the next appraisal: So what did you learn?
这一切必然会产生的结果，就是个人应该确保自己拥有这样的系统，以便踏实而一致地发展自己的技能与思维。即使在鼓励进步与创新的公司文化中，学习的最终责任，仍是落在学员的身上。
A corollary of all this is that individuals should themselves ensure they have such a system in place to reliably and consistently develop their skills and thinking. Even within a progressive and innovative corporate culture, responsibility for learning ultimately lies with the learner.
因此，我们每个人都必须培养并保持对技能的好奇心。个人所具备的最佳技能为何？其中哪些技能是真正能让你与众不同的强项，而且不仅对你现在的职务是重要的，对你整个事业也很重要？技能缺口在哪里？如何让抽象的概念如沟通、领导力及复原力等，变得更具体？我们应如何量化、调整并谈论我们的技能？
For this we all, as individuals, need to develop and carry around with us more of a curiosity about skills. Which are the skills of one’s best self? Which of those are the real differentiating strengths which are not only important in your current role, but to your entire career? Where do the gaps lie? How do we make abstract concepts such as communication, leadership, and resilience more concrete? How should we quantify and calibrate and talk about our skills?
技能是人才管理的共同要素，出现在所有员工的工作生命周期里所有重要文件中，从履历、工作说明、学习内容到绩效评量都有。我们必须培养更多技能智慧，个人和组织都是如此。
Skills are the lingua franca of talent management and run through all the important documents of the employee lifecycle — from resumés to job descriptions to learning content to appraisals. We need to develop more of a skills intelligence, as individuals and as organizations.
有许多实务能协助学习者，以下列出其中几项：
There are many practices that may help the learner, including but not limited to:
• 培养正向的学习习惯。习惯始于某项活动。选择适合你个性、生活方式与工作模式的活动，这样它们就较可能发展成长久的习惯。这些活动可以是每天早上读一篇文章、每周定时学习、每月读一本书，或是每晚花15分钟写日记自我反省。
Developing positive learning habits. A habit starts out as an activity. Choose activities which suits your personality, lifestyle, and working pattern so that they are more likely to develop into enduring habits. This could be anything from reading an article each morning, to a timeboxed hour of learning per week, to reading a book a month or taking 15 minutes for reflective journaling in the evening.
• 经由刻意练习来改善表现。把你试图培养的技能，拆解为各个组成元素，采取特定的主动措施来改善每个元素。这种做法，与每次只是以相同方式重复同样的表现正好相反。
Improving performance through deliberate practice. Deconstruct the skill you’re trying to develop, and take proactive and specific measures to improve each component part. This practice stands in contrast to just repeating performance in the same way each time.
• 保有一份“已学到”及“待学习”清单，在你的整个事业中保有这份纪录，而不只是在现职使用这份清单。这可以是一份简单的试算表，或是Google文件。重要的是，这份清单涵盖你已学到的东西，以及你在何处、何时学到的，在理想情况下，还要记录你如何运用它们（事后回忆写下）。这张清单让你能回答一些繁琐的问题，像是你半年前在学什么？
Maintaining a “learned” and “to-learn” list, which stays with you throughout your career, not just during your tenure at your current employer. This can be a simple spreadsheet or a Google doc. What’s important is that it covers what you learned, where and when you learned it, and ideally how you’ve applied it (written retrospectively). The list should enable you to answer an otherwise onerous question like: What were you learning six months ago?
• 运用一个2乘2矩阵法，来协助你选择现在想专注培养的适当技能。很少人有很多时间学习，所以我们应该考虑评估一下，运用某项新技能的好处与取得这项技能的成本，借以排定学习项目的优先顺序。
Utilizing a 2×2 matrix approach to help you choose the right skills to focus on now. Few of us have much time to learn, so we should prioritize our endeavors by considering evaluating the benefits of applying a new skill against the cost of acquiring it.
世界与工作场所已经改变。我们工作与蓬勃发展所需的技能，也随之改变，因为我们必须更明智、更聚焦地聚焦在这些技能，以便了解是哪些技能，并主动不懈且有方法地找出那些技能。其中一个方法，就是询问我们自己与他人：你如何学习？
The world and the workplace have changed. The skills we need to function and flourish have correspondingly changed, and so we need to bring them into a smarter, sharper focus to know what they are and to seek them out proactively, persistently, and methodically. One way of doing that is by asking ourselves and others: How do you learn?
马克·赵-桑德斯是filtered.com 的首席执行官兼联合创始人，该公司将咨询与技术相结合，以提升能力并推动业务变革。
