Hiring for Emotional Intelligence

Having that “bad apple” in your workplace can be very distracting if not destructive.  So in response, candidates are run through an exhaustive process of evaluation.  This process may not be the most productive method for measuring an employee’s emotional intelligence. If you want to pick good apples without hoping they fall from the tree, consider the following:

• Is the candidate self-aware and self regulated- you cannot have a loose cannon who does not understand how to control anger or anxiety.
• Is the candidate able to read others and see others’ reactions to their behavior- this can be defined as a social “radar”.
• Can the candidate learn from mistakes made- this is the best way to judge how a person responds to adversity.

Here is a short list of effective questions to detect the prospect’s emotional intelligence:

• Tell me about a conflict you had with a peer or supervisor, and how it started and became resolved?
• Tell me about a time you said or did something that had a negative impact on a peer, supervisor, or customer. How did you know the impact was negative?
• Tell me about a situation when you discovered that you were on the wrong track.  How did you recognize this, what did you do, and what did you learn?

If this approach interests you, see Adele Lynn’s book The EQ Interview: Finding Employees with High Emotional Intelligence.