大家通常会认为HR在筛选简历的时候，会特别青睐那些有着高学历和丰富实习经历的应聘者，不过人力资源执行官Regina Hartley给了我们一个不同的答案。从小在逆境中成长的她坚信，那些并没有在简历中大放异彩的求职者，可能恰恰是公司需要的人才，因为她认为：Those who flourish in the darkest of spaces are empowered with the grit(勇气、毅力、决心)to persist in an ever-changing workplace. 在TED演讲中，她给出了自己的理由。下面就让我们了解一下，到底HR喜欢什么样的应聘者。

　　Your company launches a search for an open position. The applications start rolling in, and the qualified candidates are identified. Now the choosing begins. Person A: Ivy League, 4.0, flawless resume, great recommendations. All the right stuff. Person B: state school, fair amount of job hopping, and odd jobs like cashier and singing waitress. But remember -- both are qualified. So I ask you: who are you going to pick?

　　两位符合要求的应聘者摆在你面前，一位是常青藤毕业生，完美的简历和推荐信，另一位毕业于公立学校，跳过几次槽，打过几份零工。HR会选哪位呢?

　　Roll in: to arrive in great numbers or amounts. “蜂拥而来”，例如：

　　Offers of help are still rolling in.

　　My colleagues and I created very official terms to describe two distinct categories of candidates. We call A "the Silver Spoon," the one who clearly had advantages and was destined for success. And we call B "the Scrapper," the one who had to fight against tremendous odds to get to the same point. You just heard a human resources director refer to people as Silver Spoons and Scrappers, which is not exactly politically correct and sounds a bit judgmental. But before my human resources certification gets revoked, let me explain.

　　在她的眼里，第一种应试者叫做“金汤勺”(英文里有句话叫做born with a silver spoon in your mouth，跟我们中文里的“含着金汤勺出生”意思差不多)，第二种应试者叫做“拳击手”，他们需要克服各种逆境来获得同等的成就。

　　A resume tells a story. And over the years, I've learned something about people whose experiences read like a patchwork quilt, that makes me stop and fully consider them before tossing their resumes away. A series of odd jobs may indicate inconsistency, lack of focus, unpredictability. Or it may signal a committed struggle against obstacles. At the very least, the Scrapper deserves an interview.

　　她相信一份简历讲述一个故事。有些人的简历像是用小块布拼成的被罩，不过她不会轻易地把它们丢掉。一系列的零工可能表明应试者无长性，缺少专注并且行为无法预测。但也很有可能说明应试者有着坚定的克服困难的精神。无论怎样，他们至少应该有一次面试的机会。

　　To be clear, I don't hold anything against the Silver Spoon; getting into and graduating from an elite university takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice. But if your whole life has been engineered toward success, how will you handle the tough times? One person I hired felt that because he attended an elite university, there were certain assignments that were beneath him, like temporarily doing manual labor to better understand an operation. Eventually, he quit. But on the flip side, what happens when your whole life is destined for failure and you actually succeed? I want to urge you to interview the Scrapper. I know a lot about this because I am a Scrapper. Before I was born, my father was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and he couldn't hold a job in spite of his brilliance. Our lives were one part "Cuckoo's Nest," one part "Awakenings" and one part "A Beautiful Mind."

　　她对“金汤勺”并无偏见，她承认被精英大学录取需要努力和牺牲，但是她同时觉得如果一个人总是顺风顺水，那么他将缺少应对艰难困苦的能力。她曾经雇佣了一位从一流大学毕业的应聘生。他自命不凡，觉得有些体力活配不上自己的身价，于是递交了辞呈。她希望HR能够给“拳击手”面试机会，因为她自己曾经就是他们当中的一员。在她出生前，父亲被诊断患上了偏执型精神分裂症，尽管他才华横溢，但是却无法工作。

　　hold something against somebody: to allow something that somebody has done to make you have a lower opinion of them. 例如：

　　I admit I made a mistake—but don't hold it against me.

　　Beneath: not good enough for somebody. 例如：

　　He considers such jobs beneath him.

　　They thought she had married beneath her. = She married a man of lower social status.

　　I'm the fourth of five children raised by a single mother in a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. We never owned a home, a car, a washing machine, and for most of my childhood, we didn't even have a telephone. So I was highly motivated to understand the relationship between business success and Scrappers, because my life could easily have turned out very differently. As I met successful business people and read profiles of high-powered leaders, I noticed some commonality. Many of them had experienced early hardships, anywhere from poverty, abandonment, death of a parent while young, to learning disabilities, alcoholism and violence. The conventional thinking has been that trauma leads to distress, and there's been a lot of focus on the resulting dysfunction. But during studies of dysfunction, data revealed an unexpected insight: that even the worst circumstances can result in growth and transformation. A remarkable and counterintuitive phenomenon has been discovered, which scientists call Post Traumatic Growth.

　　她在纽约布鲁克林长大，从小家境贫寒，对她来讲生活极有可能是另一番景象，这也是为什么她十分关注商业成功跟“拳击手”之间的联系。经过她对成功人士的观察发现，他们的共同点是，在有所成就之前，都经历了或多或少的磨难，无论是贫穷，被抛弃，童年丧亲，还是学习障碍，酗酒或者被施暴。传统的观点是创伤会带来痛苦，并导致行为异常，但是数据表明，无论情况多糟糕，都能让人成长和转变。科学家们称这种一反常理的现象为：创伤后成长。

　　Take this resume. This guy's parents give him up for adoption. He never finishes college. He job-hops quite a bit, goes on a sojourn to India for a year, and to top it off, he has dyslexia. Would you hire this guy? His name is Steve Jobs. In a study of the world's most highly successful entrepreneurs, it turns out a disproportionate number have dyslexia. In the US, 35 percent of the entrepreneurs studied had dyslexia. What's remarkable, among those entrepreneurs who experience post traumatic growth, they now view their learning disability as a desirable difficulty which provided them an advantage because they became better listeners and paid greater attention to detail. They don't think they are who they are in spite of adversity, they know they are who they are because of adversity. They embrace their trauma and hardships as key elements of who they've become, and know that without those experiences, they might not have developed the muscle and grit required to become successful.

　　很多成功的企业家都患有阅读障碍，但是他们现在把这项缺陷当成宝，因为他们因此成为了更好的聆听着并且更加注意细节。他们接受这些不利条件，并且对此抱着感恩的心态。

　　Top something off: to complete something successfully by doing or adding one final thing. 例如：

　　The outfit was topped off with a large black hat.

　　One of my colleagues had his life completely upended as a result of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966. At age 13, his parents were relocated to the countryside, the schools were closed and he was left alone in Beijing to fend for himself until 16, when he got a job in a clothing factory. But instead of accepting his fate, he made a resolution that he would continue his formal education. Eleven years later, when the political landscape changed, he heard about a highly selective university admissions test. He had three months to learn the entire curriculum of middle and high school. So, every day he came home from the factory, took a nap, studied until 4 am, went back to work and repeated this cycle every day for three months. He did it, he succeeded. His commitment to his education was unwavering, and he never lost hope. Today, he holds a master's degree, and his daughters each have degrees from Cornell and Harvard.

　　她的一位同事在童年时代经历了文化大革命，于是生活天翻地覆，他的父母被发配到乡下，留他自己一人在北京，学校关闭，他必须自己照顾自己。16岁那年，他得到了一份服装厂的工作，不接受命运的他决心要继续读书。11年后，当中国的政治形势发生变化时，他听说一所大学要举办入学考试，这所大学对应试者十分挑剔，他有三个月的时间备考，要学完初中高中的全部课程。每天下班回家，他稍作休息，然后学到早上4点，去工作，如此循环，3个月后，他成功了!他完成学业的承诺从未动摇过，如今，他有硕士文凭，并且两位女儿也分别从康奈尔大学和哈佛大学毕业。

　　Scrappers are propelled by the belief that the only person you have full control over is yourself. When things don't turn out well, Scrappers ask, "What can I do differently to create a better result?" Scrappers have a sense of purpose that prevents them from giving up on themselves, kind of like if you've survived poverty, a crazy father and several muggings, you figure, "Business challenges? Really? Piece of cake. I got this."

　　“拳击手”相信他们能够完全控制的人只有自己，他们也一直被这样的信念激励着。当遭遇不顺时，他们会想，“我能做什么让结果更好呢?”“拳击手”目标感很强，这不会让他们轻言放弃。就好像你经历过了贫穷和一位疯癫的老爸并且被打劫了好几次还没死，你就会想“商业上的挑战?没开玩笑吧，太简单了，没问题!”

　　And that reminds me -- humor. Scrappers know that humor gets you through the tough times, and laughter helps you change your perspective.

　　幽默。“拳击手”深知幽默可以帮助他们度过难关，笑能够改变视角和观点。

　　And finally, there are relationships. People who overcome adversity don't do it alone. Somewhere along the way, they find people who bring out the best in them and who are invested in their success. Having someone you can count on no matter what is essential to overcoming adversity. I was lucky. In my first job after college, I didn't have a car, so I carpooled across two bridges with a woman who was the president's assistant. She watched me work and encouraged me to focus on my future and not dwell on my past. Along the way I've met many people who have provided me brutally honest feedback, advice and mentorship. These people don't mind that I once worked as a singing waitress to help pay for college.

　　她认为能够战胜逆境的人，从来不是独行者。在路上他们会遇到一些人，能够发掘出他们的潜质，帮助他们战胜困难。她大学毕业后开始第一份工作的时候，没有车，于是她跟一位女士拼车过桥，那位女士恰巧是总统的助理。她鼓励她要专注于未来，不要总想着过去。她一路上遇到了很多人，他们给了她中肯的意见和指导，而且并不在意她之前是不是做服务生来赚学费。

　　Bring out: to make something appear. 例如：

　　A crisis brings out the best in her.

　　Dwell on: to think or talk a lot about something, especially something it would be better to forget. 例如：

　　So you made a mistake, but there's no need to dwell on it.

　　So back to my original question. Who are you going to bet on: Silver Spoon or Scrapper? I say choose the underestimated contender, whose secret weapons are passion and purpose.

　　最终，她给出了自己的答案：要选择那些被低估了的“拳击手”，因为他们的秘密武器是不灭的激情和明确的目标。

　　看到这里，大家也应该明白在求职面试的时候，应该给考官一个什么印象了吧!加油!

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