在線交友正變成主流 用科技戰勝孤獨大綱

Neil Clark Warren has a bold ambition. He wants “people to have a job they love and a marriage they wouldn’t change for anything”. For the 79-year-old founder and chief executive of dating site eHarmony now wants to match job hunters with employers.

尼爾•克拉克•沃倫(Neil Clark Warren)有一個大膽的願望。他希望“人們擁有一份自己熱愛的工作和一段他們拿什麼也不會去換的婚姻”。這位80歲的交友網站eHarmony創始人和首席執行官，現在希望實現求職者與僱主的配對。

The dating marketplace is crowded. Online dating, once stigmatised, is now mainstream.

交友市場已經飽和。曾揹負罵名的在線交友正變成主流。

Eharmony, founded in 2000, today competes with niche sites catering for users from vegetarians to Ayn Rand fans, as well as social media and apps such as Tinder. Though Dr Warren patently sees his site, which claims to have been responsible for 600,000 marriages, as a cut above those facilitating mere hookups. “Tinder and eHarmony are in two different businesses. Tinder is very superficial; it’s based on looks.”

Eharmony創建於2000年，如今與其競爭的是一些專門服務於各類細分用戶（從素食主義者到艾恩•蘭德(Ayn Rand)的粉絲）的網站以及社交媒體和Tinder等應用。然而，沃倫博士顯然認爲自己的網站優於那些只是安排約會的網站。該網站聲稱促成了60萬樁婚姻。“Tinder和eHarmony處於兩種不同的業務。Tinder非常膚淺；它基於外表。”

Dr Warren wants to broaden eHarmony’s appeal and become a “relationship company”. Not just making love and job matches but also fixing retirees up with advisers and the isolated with friends. He sees loneliness as one of the biggest problems in modern society. Technology, he concedes, is a double-edged sword, both contributing to and combating isolation.

沃倫博士希望拓寬eHarmony的吸引力，使其變成一家“關係公司”。不僅撮合愛情和工作，還會幫助退休人士與顧問、孤獨人羣與朋友牽線。他將孤獨視爲現代社會的最大問題之一。他承認，科技是一把雙刃劍，既導致了孤獨，也能被用來戰勝孤獨。

But first he is going after the jobs giants, LinkedIn and Monster. In December eHarmony’s subsidiary Elevated Careers will launch in the US. Dr Warren believes there is an untapped market of unfulfilled professionals. “Over 70 per cent of employees identify themselves as not engaged or actively disengaged from their jobs. We think we can reduce the amount of turnover and raise the level of productivity for companies by matching candidates with the right job, in the right career, with the right company.” He insists he can counter the modern career pattern of serial jobs in multiple companies and turn employees monogamous.

然而，首先他要效仿那些獵頭巨擘LinkedIn和Monster。今年12月，eHarmony的子公司Elevated Careers將在美國創建。沃倫認爲，懷才不遇的專業人士市場尚未被開發。“超過70%的員工認爲自己沒有投入到工作中或者根本無心工作。我們認爲，我們可以通過幫助求職者找到合適的工作、合適的職業、乃至合適的公司，來降低企業的流動率並提高生產率。”他堅持表示，他能夠應對現代職場中連續跳槽、供職於多家公司的模式，讓員工對企業忠誠。

The fallout of those who flit from job to job is far-reaching, he says. His wife’s father, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, moved jobs 17 times. “That has an impact”, he says. “When a person is unhappy at their job . . . it affects their home life, their marriage, their personal relationships, their relationships with their co-workers . . . [It has] a negative effect on the productivity of the organisations for which they are working.”

他表示，員工不斷跳槽的影響深遠。他的岳父、一位麻省理工學院(MIT)畢業生換了17份工作。“這是有影響的，”他表示，“如果人們對工作不滿……這會影響他們的家庭生活、婚姻、私人關係、與同事的關係……（這）會對他們所在企業的生產率造成負面影響。”

So for the past two years he has set social scientists and technology employees to work on the criteriaand algorithms that will help employees and employers find “the one”. The dating site asks subscribers to answer about 150 questions to help identify values and personality. So Dr Warren envisages a questionnaire to unearth a candidate’s skills, expectation of culture and personality.

因此，過去兩年，他聘請社會學專家和科技員工開始研究相關標準和算法，幫助員工和僱主找到匹配的“另一半”。該交友網站要求用戶回答約150個問題，以幫助確定他們的價值觀和性格。因此，沃倫博士設計了一份問卷，透視求職者的技能、文化預期和個性。

Few recruiters do well on matching an employee with a company culture, he says. “The majority of the workforce change jobs for reasons directly related to company culture. It is imperative we bring candidates verifiable company-culture data that matches to their core work values so they can find the best possible opportunities to experience a meaningful and emotional connection with their work.” The details of such data remain secret.

他表示，招聘機構一般做不到讓員工與企業文化匹配。“大多數員工換工作的原因與企業文化直接有關。我們必須爲求職者提供能夠符合他們的核心工作價值觀的可以查證的企業文化數據，這樣他們就能找到最佳可能的機會，與自己的工作產生有意義的、情感上的聯繫。”這些數據的具體細節仍是機密。

Dr Warren knows about being faithful to one career. He worked as a relationship psychologist for 40 years before setting up eHarmony. Originally from a small town in Iowa, he went to a school attended by only 17 pupils. He was the only child in his class. “I came both first and last,” he jokes. His father was a “true entrepreneur” who, says Dr Warren, “owned the town”.

沃倫懂得對一項事業忠誠。他在創建eHarmony之前，做了40年的婚戀心理學家。他來自愛荷華州的一個小鎮，他所在的小學只有17個學生。他們班只有他一名學生。他開玩笑說“我既是第一個到，也是最後一個到。”他的父親是一位“真正的企業家”，沃倫表示，他“是這個小鎮的所有者”。

Dr Warren’s brother-in-law took an interest in him as a teenager and encouraged his intellectual curiosity – no one else in his family had been to university. He studied at Princeton Theological Seminary before doing a PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Chicago.

沃倫的姐夫在他十幾歲時對他產生了興趣，鼓勵他對知識的好奇——他家裏其他人都沒上過大學。他先是在普林斯頓神學院(Princeton Theological Seminary)攻讀，而後在芝加哥大學(University of Chicago)獲得臨牀心理學博士學位。

His interest in relationships came from his Christian beliefs but also a sense that despite their 70-year marriage, his parents were incompatible. “My father was brilliant, very vital. He liked to talk about big things like the Middle East but my mother couldn’t keep up with him. They didn’t talk about much.”

他對婚戀的興趣來自於他的基督教信仰，也來自他的人生經歷。他的父母儘管結婚70載，但並不相配。“我父親聰明，非常有活力。他喜歡討論大事，比如中東問題，但我母親跟不上他。他們交流不多。”

He says the relationship still worked very well for their children: “They never said anything sarcastic to each other.” But his parents’ example instilled in him the belief that a “long marriage is not necessarily a great marriage”.

他表示，對於子女而言，他們的關係仍非常不錯：“他們從不互相挖苦。”但父母的例子讓他深信：“長久的婚姻不一定是美滿的婚姻”。

So Dr Warren set up as a marriage counsellor, seeing more than 7,700 people over the decades. The counselling only confirmed his convictions that divorce was due to incompatibility that should have been evident before the wedding. “I thought people had found the wrong person. They had never received any training about who they should meet.”

於是，沃倫成爲了一名婚姻顧問，幾十年來有超過7700人向他諮詢。輔導工作強化了他的信念：導致離婚的不和諧因素本應在結婚前就顯而易見。“我認爲，人們往往找錯對象。他們從來沒有接受過任何培訓，告訴他們應該找什麼樣的另一半。”

Pre-marital counselling did not seem to work. “I never had one couple cancel their wedding as a result.” He recalls one session in which the man told his fiancée: “Nothing this man says will stop me marrying you.”

婚前諮詢似乎不管用。“從來沒有一對情侶因爲諮詢過我而取消婚禮。”他記得在一次諮詢中，一位男子告訴他的未婚妻：“這個男人說的任何話都不會阻止我娶你。”

It was this that set him – together with his son-in-law – on the idea of matchmaking online. Dr Warren had also reached a point in his career when his work had become “samey”. Despite diversifying into writing relationship books and running seminars, he craved stimulation. So in 2000, just before the dotcom bubble burst, the pair managed to raise $2.5m funding.

正是這一點讓他（以及他的女婿）產生了在線做媒的想法。當時沃倫的事業也到了“單調乏味”的時刻。儘管他會撰寫有關婚戀的書籍，還舉辦研討會，但他渴望刺激。於是，在2000年，就在網絡泡沫破裂之前，兩人成功籌集到了250萬美元資金。

It was difficult to find subscribers at the start, he says, because internet dating was relatively new. The first users tended to be those living in sparsely populated areas so there were a lot of long-distance relationships. But gradually, the California-based site grew.

他說道，一開始很難找到用戶，因爲當時互聯網交友還是一個相對新鮮的事物。首批用戶往往是那些居住在人口稀少地區的人，因此有很多異地戀。但逐漸地，這個以加州爲大本營的網站開始壯大。

In 2007 he stood down from the privately owned company and moved to Maine with his wife to enjoy their 30-acre grounds, complete with golf course, swimming pool and tennis courts. Despite trying to stay active, he got bored, and, convinced that his company had lost its way, returned as chief executive.

2007年，他從這傢俬人所有的企業退下來，與妻子搬到緬因州，享受30英畝的田園空間，包括高爾夫球場、游泳池以及網球場。儘管他努力保持活躍，但他還是感到了厭倦，他認爲他的公司迷失了方向，於是回去重新出任首席執行官。

During retirement he read a lot of books about comeback kings such as Starbucks’ Howard Schultz and Steve Jobs. He felt “glad to have a chance to run the company as he wanted it”. In doing so he cut his staff from 320 to 190 and says the reorganisation is aligned with his views on job-matching. “We matched people with the right jobs in our own company.”

退休期間，他閱讀了很多有關王者歸來的圖書，例如星巴克(Starbucks)的霍華德•舒爾茨(Howard Schultz)以及史蒂夫•喬布斯(Steve Jobs)。他“很高興有機會按照自己的意願來管理這家公司”。在此過程中，他將員工從320人裁減至190人，他表示，重組與他有關工作配對的想法是一致的。“我們在自己的公司實現了員工與合適職位的匹配。”

Dr Warren also believes he has made his “peace with same-sex relationships” after the company created a partner website for gay singles, called Compatible Partners, as a result of court cases that said eHarmony violated discrimination laws upholding equal rights regardless of sexual orientation. “We welcome everybody,” he says.

沃倫博士還認爲，他與“同性婚戀講和了”，此前該公司爲單身同性戀者創辦了一個同志交友網站，名爲Compatible Partners，這源於一些法庭訴訟，這些訴訟稱，eHarmony違反了反歧視法，這些法律支持不同性取向的人士擁有平等權利。他表示：“我們歡迎所有人。”

Can the 79-year-old grandfather keep on working? “I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I was bored in retirement.” He hopes, however, that the company’s chief operating officer will take over when that day eventually comes. “He’s a verb and I’m a noun.” What does he mean? “I’m more of a visionary and he’s more of a do-er.”

這位80歲的祖父還能繼續工作嗎？“我認爲我永遠不會退休。我厭倦退休。”然而，他希望，當那一天最終到來時，公司的首席運營官將接替他。“他是動詞，我是名詞。什麼意思？“我在更大程度上是一位夢想家，而他在更大程度上是一位實幹者。”