Evaluating without judging, a challenge? Yet this is what recruitment agencies are legally required to do. Because it is not because, when evaluating a candidate, there is an evaluation of a personality, that recruitment consultants and headhunters can afford to indicate in the margin, next to the candidate's file: "soft". The report on the candidate must contain very factual elements, warns Rose-Marie Ponsot, founder of Atopos Conseil, co-author of Les coulisses du recrutement with Françoise Dissaux-Doutriaux (François Bourin editor). You can't put subjective assessments into it. Michael Page had been sued after a "bust" in his files because consultants had scribbled such comments in his files;

Before submitting his report on a candidate, the consultant determines with his client what the criteria for the position to be filled are. It is often necessary to temper the business manager or human resources director, who tends to hope to find an extroverted candidate, but not too much, a leader born with team spirit... You have to ask him: why this criterion? explains Rose-Marie Ponsot. Why extroverted, for a member of the management committee? The requirements have to be weighed up...;

Once this has been done, the leadership criterion, for example, having been validated, remains to be assessed and presented to the client. We can carry out personality testssays Rose-Marie Ponsot. They're interesting because just because someone has leadership experience doesn't mean they're going to be a leader. Moreover, when we do tests, we give feedback to the candidate, so we validate the results with him, he knows what he has been judged on;

The second solution is to provide the client with an argument to back up the candidate's assessment with concrete examples, talking about his or her experiences... It's not a mark from one to ten that will interest the client," laughs Rose-Marie Ponsot. Technical skills are generally validated at the start of the recruitment process, during the search and by key questions from the first contacts.

Sometimes we then make a comparison, a synthesis with the results of several candidates, agrees Rose-Marie Ponsot, which summarises the criteria of skills and interpersonal skills. This synthesis report, which may include pluses or minuses, complements the much more extensive documentation or argumentation delivered at the end of the mission by the recruitment consultancy or hunting firm. And these are not assessments made behind the candidate's back, insists Rose-Marie Ponsot. In principle, in our profession, candidates are aware of what is going on. They need to know the criteria on which they are being judged, and that these criteria are important for the job;