Emotional Intelligence Skills: How to Spot Them in Hiring

What is EQ?

The term “emotional intelligence” was first unveiled in a paper written by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer. According to the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Salovey and Mayer developed the theory while painting a house.

“Over fresh coats of paint, the two friends and collaborators lamented that theories of intelligence had no systematic place for emotions,” according to the website. “Using each of their expertise, they articulated a theory that described a new kind of intelligence: the ability to recognize, understand, utilize and regulate emotions effectively in everyday life.”

Annie McKee defines EQ in the workplace as the ability to understand and manage your emotions while grasping other people’s emotions and motivations. With these skills, an emotionally intelligent employee can help a team work together on shared goals.

“Whenever you put two or more people together, they need to learn how to work together, and EQ is a huge part of that,” said McKee, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and director of the PennCLO Executive Doctoral Program.

How to hire for EQ

While many employers understand the importance of finding employees with a high EQ, how do you make this search part of your hiring process? Here are some important steps to take.

1. Commit to focusing on EQ.

Employers must first commit to looking for emotionally intelligent employees, according to McKee. She said that employers will often say this is a quality they want; however, when the hiring process actually starts, they become laser-focused on resumes and job skills.

“The first step is acknowledging openly that EQ is one of your top criteria for hiring,” McKee said. “It is one of the things you are going to recruit on and one of the things you are going to screen candidates on.”

Once you’ve made that commitment, you need to dig in during the interview process; this means getting candidates to explain things they have done in their past that displayed EQ, such as leading a team through a rough patch.

2. Bring EQ into the interview.

One technique McKee suggests is conducting an advanced behavioral interview. She said that hiring managers could use this to identify a quality — EQ, in this case — they want in that employee’s skill set.

“Ask about experiences, last job, where they are going in the future, strengths and weaknesses,” McKee said. “They are all useful. You get a sense of their interpersonal style and comfort [with] having a conversation in a stressful situation and a sense of the fit for the culture.”

McKee said that you also have to dig deeper to see previous examples of their EQ. Hiring managers can ask job candidates to talk about a time when they were working on a team and felt they and the team were successful.

“I want to hear about what you did to make that happen,” McKee said. “Oftentimes, people will say something vague. Push them to really talk about what they do until you get to the point of them telling you things like, ‘Well, the team didn’t start very well. In fact, we had some conflict. I sat back and tried to understand what the conflict was about, and then one by one, I tried to reach them.’”

McKee said that getting an answer that covers what people did, thought and felt about the situation, and their actions is paramount. Then you can get a much better sense of the candidate’s EQ.

Bill Benjamin agrees that the best way to determine someone’s EQ level during the hiring process is to ask interview questions that put them in stressful situations; this method can draw out emotional responses. “This way, you can understand how they have responded to pressure, conflict and difficult emotions in the past, as well as observe how a candidate reacts to emotionally based questions,” said Benjamin, a partner at the Institute for Health and Human Potential.

3. Ask relevant questions.

In addition to common interview questions, these are some of the interview questions Benjamin suggests that hiring managers ask:

Can you describe a time when you:

• Were given critical feedback?
• Had tension or conflict on a team?
• Were faced with a difficult conversation?
• Had a change instituted that you didn’t agree with?
• Were tasked with coming up with a creative solution under pressure?
• Made a mistake?

For each question, Benjamin said, hiring managers should ask the candidate follow-up questions about the thoughts and feelings they had and the actions they took.

If someone can’t answer a question, Benjamin said, it may be a sign that they shy away from tough conversations or have trouble admitting mistakes. He said hiring managers should use the answers to gauge how much self-awareness the candidate has of their thoughts and emotions. If they have trouble describing situations, they may lack emotional awareness.

For those who can describe specific situations, Benjamin encourages hiring managers to consider whether their actions demonstrate the ability to take ownership; he said they should also consider whether the actions show personal accountability and the ability to step into pressure situations.

“While you need to ensure that people meet the minimum requirements of EQ, experience and technical skills, the bottom line is: If you aren’t hiring and developing people for EQ skills, you are not going to be competitive in the future,” Benjamin said.

Why EQ skills are important in the workplace

When employers seek top performers, research shows that they should start by looking at EQ. Benjamin said research by Harvard University, the Institute for Health and Human Potential, and many others has determined that EQ counts for twice as much as IQ and technical skills combined in determining who will be a star performer.

Benjamin said EQ is by far the most critical hiring factor to consider.

“Provided people have the [necessary] threshold experience, IQ and technical skills, EQ either makes or derails a candidate’s performance and career,” he said.

Here’s a look at the factors that make a potential employee’s EQ so important.

EQ may outrank IQ.

“It’s not that IQ and technical skills aren’t important, but they are threshold competencies: You need a certain amount of them to do any job, and once you are over the threshold, getting more IQ and technical skills doesn’t significantly improve performance,” Benjamin said. “It’s often said, ‘IQ and technical skills get you the job, and EQ gets you the promotion.’ Or the corollary, ‘IQ and technical skills will get you hired, and EQ will get you fired.’”

The World Economic Forum (WEF) 2020 Future of Jobs report says that EQ is one of the 10 most in-demand skills; also, it will remain there through at least 2025.

“Overall, social skills — such as persuasion, EQ and teaching others — will be in higher demand across industries than narrow technical skills, such as programming or equipment operation and control,” according to the WEF. “In essence, technical skills will need to be supplemented with strong social and collaboration skills.”

Jobs are evolving.

McKee believes that as more “dull and dangerous” jobs fall by the wayside in favor of artificial intelligence and machine learning, EQ will be even more critical; she points out that the remaining jobs will involve things that machines can’t do. This includes jobs requiring complex thinking and envisioning the future — jobs that require understanding your values, emotions and thought processes.

McKee said that these jobs will also necessitate understanding how to work with people vastly different from ourselves; it will also involve learning how to read people so we can guide them individually and collectively toward a common goal.

Leaders have more impact than ever.

While EQ is essential for all employees, McKee believes that it may be even more critical for those in charge. She said that managers and other leaders set the tone for the entire workplace; therefore, good managers must understand how their emotions can impact those around them.

“If they aren’t able to understand their own impact on people — for example, they don’t understand when they are having a bad day and when they are stressed out — [that]’s contagious, literally,” McKee said. “And then other people will start to have a bad day; [then] before you know it, everyone is, and no one is thinking as clearly as they need to.”

How to improve employees’ EQ

Sometimes, employers must work with what they have, which means improving their current employees’ EQ. Here are a few ways to accomplish this:

• Train for each EQ domain. Offering interactive training programs and more long-term coaching support can will help build, enhance and maintain the four domains of EQ (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management). While an employee may not have a customer-facing or interactive role, any employee expected to communicate with team members should use EQ to manage professional relationships better and tend to their own emotional regulation needs.
• Practice meditation. Tina Hawk, senior vice president of human resources at GoodHire, said that a significant aspect of developing EQ is our ability to self-regulate emotions. Meditation is one of the most effective and popular methods for achieving this. It’s also important for organizations to understand workplace stress and offer stress-reduction opportunities and employee wellness plans. Highly stressed individuals usually struggle to regulate their emotions.
• Set an example. Employees look to leaders to set an example for many things in the workplace — regulating and properly displaying emotions is one of them. If managers or higher-ups take steps to improve their EQ, it sends a message to employees that this is something the company values; this may encourage employees to improve their EQ.
• Get HR involved. Your HR department, or whoever has an HR role in the company, should be directly involved in creating formal processes for improving EQ. These processes can be part of successful onboarding or retraining programs for current employees. Making it a formal program will make employees feel like it’s vital to their job — hopefully spurring them to take it seriously and practice EQ in their work and personal lives.

EQ helps teams flourish

When you add team members with high levels of EQ, especially in leadership positions, you can expect improved team dynamics. Emotionally intelligent teams display better communication, collaboration and problem-solving, not to mention contribute to a healthier workplace culture. Not only can you hire with EQ in mind, but you can also coach and develop EQ amongst your existing employees. Doing so could lead to some measurable improvements in your business.

Tejas Vemparala and Jennifer Post contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.