An organization is a social place — which means that an employee can’t function individually.
All the technical experience and professional skills in the world will not add up to the employee being a team player, a good leader, and a star performer in your organization.
There’s one trait that recruiters have been concentrating on while hiring employees — emotional intelligence. This ability to understand and be aware of coworkers’ emotions as well as their own gives the employee the much-needed skill of navigating the social environment of the workplace tactfully.
A successful organization is high on emotional intelligence – the team understands the emotions and feelings of their coworkers; the employees understand the emotions and feelings of the clients, customers, and so on.
When you are trying to hire employees with high emotional intelligence, here are a few tips that you can incorporate in the hiring strategies of your organization:
- Incorporate New Interview Techniques
Behavioral Event Interviewing (BEI) helps you determine the emotional intelligence of the candidate you are recruiting for your organization.
This interview technique gauges emotional intelligence quotient by asking candidates to describe a situation or experience they had at their previous job. Since this is an informal interview technique, it accurately measures how the candidate feels about work pressure, working in a team, and other things in an organization.
It gives you an insight into how the candidate handles their emotions and that of other people they interact with, in high-pressure situations.
- Check If the Candidate Is a Cultural Fit
Each organization is like a unique entity — it has its own culture, ethics, and way of getting work done.
You need to make sure that the candidate you are recruiting has a working style and ethics that are a perfect match to those of your organization. This is where the emotional intelligence of the candidate plays an important role — you need to make sure the candidate will be able to mix with the people in your organization. Your existing employees also need to be warm and welcoming towards a new recruit.
- Check, then Crosscheck the References
References are a great way to know the temperament and assess the emotional intelligence of your potential employee rather than looking at the resume. If you want to know how your candidate will be perceived in a workplace by other people, then it would be a good idea to call up their ex-colleagues and ex-managers.
To assess the emotional intelligence of the candidate, you can ask the following questions to the references:
-How the candidate handled a stressful situation? – To access how they function under pressure.
-What happened when the candidate’s working style clashed with a coworkers’ – To see if the candidate shows empathy towards his coworkers.
Though emotional intelligence does not qualify a candidate for a job position, it can be a deciding factor on how they cope with situations thrown at them in the workplace, which can help inculcate a better organizational culture.
