Screening For Emotional Intelligence: Job Candidate Interviewing

Emotional Intelligence, or EI/EQ, is the capacity to understand and manage your emotions. It is that "essence" in each of us that affects how we govern our behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that power us to achieve positive (or negative) outcomes. And most importantly, it drives our life, work, and career success.

Enhancing EQ in the workplace has two very practical benefits:

  • The individual who can understand what stimuli 'pushes his buttons' 0r creates anxiety can learn to harness those emotions, control them, and use to create more positive outcomes. Being able to interpret and respond appropriately to the emotions of others makes a manager more effective and builds camaraderie among workers and stronger client connections.

  • For an organization, encouraging emotional intelligence leads to better collaboration and creates a happier, healthier, and more dynamic operation.

Emotional intelligence interview questions can be extremely helpful in narrowing down your pool of job applicants, especially if you have a lot of candidates with similarly impressive qualifications.

However, make sure you don’t just jump in and come up with your own ways to assess emotional intelligence; follow these guidelines to make sure you’re doing it the right way.

Multiple studies have identified the one dynamic that employers see as a true necessity in their employees-they seek talent with a desire to make a positive difference inside their organization; those who possess a higher sense of self and responsibility.  They overwhelmingly value Emotional Intelligence (EQ)over IQ and skill. 

Michael R. Frazier, Mindfulness, Mindset, Moxie, and Mojo: Job Seeker Success

Don't:

  • Use personality tests as a proxy for EQ. Many of the EI/EQ measures are designed to measure emotional intelligence as a facet of personality rather than an indicator of work habits, competencies, and skills. They may not measure specific components of emotional intelligence such as self-awareness, positive outlook, adaptability, achievement orientation, empathy, or inspirational leadership.

  • Use a self-report test (i.e., a test in which your candidates answer questions and report on their own emotional intelligence. This doesn’t really work for two reasons: (1) if a person is not self-aware, they possibly aren’t going to be able to accurately assess their own emotional intelligence, and (2) if they are self-aware, you could be giving them the opportunity to exaggerate their skills or abilities and make themselves seem like a better candidate than they really are.

  • Use a 360-degree feedback instrument-even if it is a good measure of EI competencies. A tool like 360-degree feedback is best used for development and improvement in current employees rather than evaluation and hiring. When these instruments are used to evaluate, some people “game” them by carefully selecting the respondents and even instructing them how to answer the questions.

 Do:

  • Get references for the candidate-and actually call them! Letters of reference don’t cut it when it comes to gauging a candidate’s EI/EQ, because they are carefully prepared, static, and usually pretty general. When you get the chance to speak with a candidate’s references, you can ask them questions that really get to the heart of EI/EQ and its sub-components and competencies. Get as many examples as you can and press for details. Above all, be sure to ask for examples of how your candidate treats other people.

  • Interview for emotional intelligence. This might sound easy or like it’s something you are already doing, but chances are you aren’t actually assessing EI/EQ. In interviews that aren’t strictly structured, we usually let people be vague in their responses-even to the point of not really answering the question-and we often fail to ask good follow-up questions. Even when we ask candidates directly about emotional intelligence or EI-related competencies, they generally provide us with a picture of an idealized version of themselves rather than an accurate portrait of their real selves. To overcome these obstacles to getting a good handle on your candidates’ EI/EQ, behavioral event interviewing is an excellent tool when considering candidates (McKee, 2016).

Behavioral event interviewing is a method my organization employs that allows our interviewing experts to observe a candidate's EI/EQ competencies almost firsthand.

This technique can give you insight into your candidate’s thought processes, her awareness of her own emotions, how she thinks and feels about others, what she does during a conflict, and how she handles disagreements and challenges with other people (McKee, 2016).

References

  • DeLeon, M. (2015). The importance of emotional intelligence at work. Entrepreneur.Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245755

  • Dhanak, U. (n.d.). 7 great examples of emotional intelligence in the workplace. Magazines Today. Retrieved from http://www.magazinestoday.co.nz/7-great-examples-emotional-intelligence-workplace/

  • Ealias, A., & George, J. (2012). Emotional intelligence and job satisfaction: A correlational study. The International Journal's Research Journal of Commerce & Behavioural Science, 1, 37-42.

  • Elite World Hotels. (2018). 5 advantages of emotional intelligence in business life. Elite World Hotels Blog. Retrieved from https://www.eliteworldhotels.com.tr/blog-en/5-advantages-of-emotional-intelligence-in-business-life.1241.aspx

  • McKee, A. (2016). How to hire for emotional intelligence. Harvard Business Review.Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/02/how-to-hire-for-emotional-intelligence

  • Nair, M. (2016). The importance of emotional intelligence in human resources. LinkedIn. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-emotional-intelligence-human-resources-mahesh-nair/

  • Pekaar, K. A., van der Linden, D., Bakker, A. B., & Born, M. P. (2017). Emotional intelligence and job performance: The enactment and focus on others' emotions. Human Performance, 30, 135-153. DOI:10.1080/08959285.2017.1332630

  • Tagoe, T., & Quarshie, E. N. (2017). The relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction among nurses in Accra. Nursing Open, 4, 84-89. DOI:10.1002/nop2.70

  • Ackerman, C. (2018). How to improve Emotional Intelligence in the workplace.

  • Frazier, Michael R. (2018) Mindfulness, Mindset, Moxie and Mojo.

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