Emotional Intelligence Assessment for Talent Optimization in Hiring

March 11, 2020 at 2:06 pm
Emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is important for the workplace.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, reason with and manage your emotions as well as to understand and deal effectively with the emotions of others. It is an important workplace trait for employees who want to be not just effective but fulfilled while at work. Emotional intelligence is also important for companies to consider when they hire employees because it is a critical part of their talent optimization strategy.

Why Employers Want Emotionally Intelligent Employees

Employees with high emotional intelligence make the workplace better for everyone, not just themselves. Because they can understand and manage their own emotions, there will be fewer outbursts that hurt productivity and cause divisions in the workplace.

Not only that, but when people who aren’t as emotionally intelligent act out, their emotionally intelligent peers will cope with it better and may help to teach those employees how to handle their own emotions better next time, further decreasing future problems. Even if emotionally intelligent employees only serve as a good example, they can encourage positive change.

Emotionally intelligent employees bring out the best in themselves and others, just by being there. In some cases, emotional intelligence can be more important than technical skills for workplace functioning. After all, even top-notch technical skills won’t lead to much productivity in an unhealthy environment where people don’t know how to work well together.

How Emotional Intelligence Contributes to Talent Optimization

While EI doesn’t appear to have much to do with talent optimization, in reality, it is an important component. If hiring employees with high levels of EI contributes to workplace success, it can and should be measured as part of the process of matching new hires and employees to their optimal jobs within the company.

Talent wanted sign.

Talent optimization is helped by emotional intelligence.

Talent assessments that look at multiple aspects of EI will lead to better talent optimization so that working well together becomes second nature as time goes on. EI begets more EI as people help each other understand themselves and others better. Eventually, the entire company culture evolves to reflect this growing understanding.

Certain jobs with high levels of interpersonal interaction are prime targets for using EI assessments in hiring. Even so, most jobs require some level of interaction to be successful. Behavioral assessments from the Predictive Index incorporate some measurement of soft skills related to EI, such as the strength of an employee or candidate’s need for domination and whether they are primarily an extrovert or introvert.

Since optimizing talent affects other employee dynamics like retention, productivity and employee engagement, focusing on EI’s contributions to talent optimization will also benefit many other aspects of the company as a whole.

Just like focusing on EI helps companies integrate seemingly unrelated aspects of their operations, this focus can also help to integrate the different aspects of what it means to optimize talent as well. Narish International helps companies like yours use a variety of methods to build higher performing teams.