Why should Emotional Intelligence be an integral part of your Hiring strategy?
Emotional Intelligence entails Knowing your emotions, Managing own emotions, Staying motivated, Recognizing and understanding other people’s emotions, & Managing relationships effectively. And these abilities highly impact effective decision making and stress management capabilities.
Highly innovative and successful companies like Google, L’Oreal, AT&T, even the U.S. Air Force are factoring emotional intelligence into their hiring processes and using it as an integral part of their people management strategy. Google no longer uses test scores, GPAs or brainteasers to assess candidates. VP Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google in an interview to The New York Times, told that “GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring … they don’t predict anything.” Instead, Bock looks for cognitive ability, humility, emergent leadership and ownership. According to him, Google likes to hire curious, quick-learning generalists who can master all the challenges that are thrown at them, and therefore rates general smarts at the top of his list and specific skills at the bottom.
Going back to the question, why is it important to integrate EQ as a part of hiring strategy? People with high Emotional Intelligence tend to be more adaptable, self-effacing, collaborative, calm and composed under stress, resilient, and open to learning and improvement. They are able to influence key stakeholders, negotiate well, problem solvers, team players, articulate and self-motivated. Thus, they are more likely to be effective in leading change, persuasiveness, and have expertise in building and leading teams.
Experts agree that technical skills can be taught much more easily than soft skills. You can have the best technology and processes in the world, but if your people aren’t able to communicate about them, if they are unable to efficiently demonstrate teamwork, critical thinking and emotional intelligence, your business may not succeed.
Emotional Intelligence plays a vital role in not only retaining the jobs but also in effective functioning under pressure, working with others and managing others. It is therefore only logical to believe that as people grow in their roles and responsibilities these abilities become necessarily essential. Consequently, it only makes business sense to use EI as a fundamental part of HR policy.
– Preeti Dubey
