Emotional Intelligence: Lessons for Hiring and Selection

"But she presented such a different character in the interviews". The story is a common one.

Selecting the right people for your company is one of the most important business strategies you will ever employ. Breakthroughs in psychological science allow business owners to do so with greater accuracy and precision than ever before. It's no longer guesswork to determine what makes a star performer.

Research has demonstrated that success leaves clues and those clues are reproducible in the form of leadership competencies, skills and capabilities that, when mastered and employed, are correlated with business and leadership success.

Conventional wisdom for hiring is all wrong! "Goodness of fit" theories tell us that selecting the right person for the right position is as simple as matching a person's skills with a job's tasks. This sounds right, but it's an obsolete model. The problem is that "fit" is only half the story of successful performance.

It is not just what a person knows (intellectual know-how and technical expertise) that determines job success, but also who that person is (emotional acumen and interpersonal competence) that will determine whether or not the individual can execute what they know with actual human beings by performing tasks that translate into profitability.  This more useful set of competencies or abilities has a name - "Emotional Intelligence" (EQ).

Regardless of what business or industry you are in, the fundamental unit of any business transaction is an interpersonal encounter between human beings. In that encounter your brand is articulated, your product or service will be assessed and its value determined, your customer service (or lack thereof) will be experienced, and your market share will be bolstered or broken. No amount of IQ, education, or experience will guarantee that this occurs successfully or optimally, or in a manner that increases profitability.

If emotional or interpersonal obliviousness interferes with one's ability to perform, execute a plan, motivate a team, or navigate sticky interpersonal predicaments, no amount of financial acumen will be able to save the bottom line.

So, as it turns out, the so called "soft skills" of communication, reasoning and persuasion are not as soft as they once were regarded. If you want to hire the best, you must select persons who have intelligence, technical skill and that basket of "emotional skills" that will allow them to perform and deliver results.

To learn more about EQ and how to use it for hiring and selection, contact Dr. Jay Kent-Ferraro at Jay@DrJayFerraro.com.  Also, pick up a copy of Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and visit www.eiconsortium.org.