Exchange between 2 speakers resulting from a working session illustrating the concept of an attempt at a solution and the reframing of a request
A: This is the case of an annoyed HR consultant faced with the hesitation of one of his clients to whom he proposes candidates for a position and who is unable to make the final recruitment decision. The final candidate approached was the subject of a dozen different interviews, he liked it and finally when it was time to make the concrete decision to recruit him, a hesitation reappeared: do we really have the right candidate? This is a job creation with a new work organization within the client company, resulting in many relational changes. The challenge of success creates very strong pressure and doubt always arises as to whether we have the right candidate in front.
B: And so what happens, what does the consultant do with his client?
A: He tries to reassure him, he suggests that new interviews can take place… and at the very last stage, the client, in order to obtain an answer to his question, wishes to have the candidate take a psychological and personality motivation test. The consultant fears that at this stage the candidate does not understand why once again we are still questioning his abilities and that learning of the existence of this new last stage, he will run out of steam and end up giving up the position, or well being in a state of insecurity such that it risks putting him in a bad position when integrating the job. While this candidate fits the bill, and is, in the opinion of the consultant, the best possible candidate given the context…
B: And how did you precede, what was your intervention?
A: The intervention consisted in telling this consultant that the more he tries to reassure his client and by rational means, to want to convince him that his candidate is the best, the more his ineffectiveness... B: So that's it,
him he tries to reassure him with a logical and rational discourse.
A: Here... to see that the more he seeks to reassure his client with a logical and rational discourse, the more it relieves the client at first, but in a second stage, doubt again takes hold of each other and the ever-increasing requests for additional information to reassure himself appear, which can never be…
B: The requests he cannot answer.
A: What we recommended to him is to stop what he is doing to reassure his client and make him fear more than his fear of being wrong.
Namely by relying on the fact that they still have a surge of sympathy for this candidate, that this candidate is like a champion for them and that you have to know how to be careful to spare your champions and therefore to question the client : by implementing this personality investigation process, what effect does it have on the champion in question?
Will this put him in better conditions to approach his future situation or will it start to insinuate that we doubt his abilities and consequently contaminate his confidence in the company. And we led him to come back to the context of the situation and its challenges and to think about how they were going to behave with their future candidate to put him in the best conditions or not when he took office... B: And What happened ?
A: So the consultant did indeed understand the dynamic in which he was stuck.
He nevertheless asked that we be able to make an appointment with the client and me, who was mandated for this final psychological evaluation. And what was very surprising is that at the time of this appointment, in fact the consultant had already refocused his client on the very fact that... B: ... the more the candidate is tested, the more we confirm that he wouldn't be up to it…
A: Exactly.
And so the client realized that at this point there was no rational way, no way, whether it was further testing or further interviews, that could give him absolute confidence that his his recruitment. And so he decided to trust, despite his doubts - quite legitimate, moreover, given the stakes of the context of the situation - the recruitment took place. B: We had news that he was very happy...
A: Yes, the recruitment took place and above all, they let go of the fact that they absolutely wanted my ultimate information which would allow them to have complete confidence... This phase had become useless to them, of course…
