Why you should include Emotional Intelligence (EQ / EI) in your recruitment process?

Why you should include Emotional Intelligence (EQ / EI) in your recruitment process?

According to Harvard Business Review Emotional intelligence is “the key to professional success”. Especially in this changing, innovative and complex environment.

Emotional Intelligence is the ability of an individual to understand his or her own emotions and the emotions of others.  Daniel Goleman psychologist and award-winning author of Emotional Intelligence describes EI as self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.

When recruiting, I strongly believe that EI should be assessed as much as other areas like reference checks and job competence, let’s look at the reasons why:

Getting the top performers

First of all, targeting not only Intelligence Quotient (IQ) during the interview process and including EI will help identify and get you top performers or leaders in your company. It is proven that the stronger the EI a candidate has, the higher they will perform in the job. Emotions are essential for effective decision making and motivate.

Ways of assessing EI can be either by asking behavioural questions or a psychological based test. Here at Quay Appointments, when recruiting internal staff, we use Six Seconds  an Emotional Intelligence Assessment to validate the answers provided at interview.

Best Fit For Your Team

Diversity in the team to attract and retain talented people is more and more important in organisations.  When looking at EI, we will need to look at it individually and also as a group. To get a high performing team, you will need to get a balance and know the EI of each team member in order to help navigate emotions and get their strengths to be fully successful and work best together.

Managing your people to the best

I personally use EI assessment to understand and work better with our staff. It is important to have a great overview of what makes your staff behave the way they do, their strengths and the areas they may need development in.

Unlike IQ, EI can be changed at any time of our life as long as awareness is there.

I also use the EI assessment as a personal development tool for the staff. It helps them to build personal awareness, leading them to make a choice to become the best they can be.

• Leila Boubahlouli  IT Recruitment Consultant.
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