What are pros and cons of Emotional Intelligence in hiring?

For better or worse, Intelligence can become useless when emotions sway. This is why emotional Intelligence remains one of the most underrated skills. This is especially true when it comes to hiring. Today, every company wants to have the best candidates. However, recruiters usually tend to focus on skills that measure the Intelligence Quotient(IQ) while ignoring emotional skills such as self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Emotional Intelligence is always an important asset for any person as it helps them communicate, decide, and lead. Each office employee will find themselves in a situation where they will need to rely on their emotional Intelligence to navigate an issue. This requires employees to manage their own emotions as well as understand the emotions of others.

Emotional Intelligence components 

Emotional Intelligence includes four components on which it is measured. These four components are as follows:

• Self-awareness 
• Self-control 
• Empathy 
• Social skills

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Self Awareness 

Self-awareness is the ability to recognize one’s own emotions and how they may affect one’s behaviors and, in turn, others. This skill is the first step in becoming emotionally intelligent, as it requires one to admit that one has certain emotions and behaviors that may be problematic. Self-awareness requires an individual to understand their strengths, weaknesses, and triggers.

Being self-aware allows an individual to improve decision-making, improve and regulate triggers, and increase confidence and adaptability. Some ways to increase self-awareness are to use a journal, ask for feedback, and continuously monitor one’s own behavior.

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Self Control 

Once you have self-awareness, the next step is to apply this to regulate one’s own behavior. So, the individual now has to manage their emotions and behaviors to ensure they don’t make others uncomfortable. The key aim here is to slowly let oneself adapt to the changes in one’s personality. Employees who have already recognized their triggers have to practice impulse control, which would make them make hasty decisions. 

Self-control benefits include improved decision-making quality, professionalism, relationships, and resilience. Some ways to increase self-control are using positive self-talk, setting personal boundaries, exercising, and meditating.

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Empathy 

Empathy is the skill that allows humans to understand other emotions as they have experienced them. This feeling allows human beings to form deep connections. The key aspects of empathy are simple: analyze the situation, actively listen, see the perspective, and form a compassionate response. Empathy also requires a person to recognize nonverbal behaviors such as body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice.

Empathy benefits a person by helping them improve their personal and professional relationships. It also reduces miscommunication and the chances of conflicts arising in the workplace, creating an environment of trust. Some ways to increase empathy are practicing active listening, perspective thinking, and observing nonverbal behavior.

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Advantages of Emotional Intelligence 

Personal Advantages 

Better Self Awareness

Being empathetic allows one to become more self-aware, which is a great way for a person to improve their behavior. We must understand that every human being has biases, be they conscious, subconscious, or unconscious. Tackling unconscious bias is the hardest of them all, and the best way to achieve this is to become self-aware. This will help a person understand other emotions, strengths, and weaknesses.

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Improved Emotional Control 

Another advantage of emotional Intelligence is that it allows one to have better control over one’s behavior, especially the impulsive one. This is massively helpful in pressure situations where the chances of making decisions based on emotions are pretty substantial. Thus, having good control over emotions and behavior helps enhance the decision-making process.

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Increased the resilience 

In a workplace, employees have to adapt to overcome the day-to-day challenges. Emotionally intelligent people are more likely to remain resilient when faced with situations where there is a need for people with a positive attitude. This also helps them to manage stress effectively, thus not letting it overcome them mentally.

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Greater Self-Motivation

Emotional Intelligence can also lead employees to greater self-motivation. This feeling always acts as a catalyst for employees to improve themselves on a day-to-day basis. It also helps bolster the mindset and attitude of the person, helping them become more goal-oriented.

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Professional Advantages

Better Leadership Skills

Better Emotional Intelligence helps a person develop enhanced leadership skills, which include understanding, inspiring, and guiding their teams through the workplace’s highs and lows. People with better leadership skills are adept at fostering positive work environments, resolving conflicts effectively, and making well-balanced decisions devoid of bias. Some ways to improve leadership skills are practicing active listening, encouraging open communication, and developing better emotional self-control. 

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Better Teamwork and Collaboration

Having a workplace with highly trusted employees greatly helps create an efficient workplace. It also leads to better teamwork and collaboration. This skill comes of great help during conflicts as each stakeholder is allowed to state their opinions, thus helping the team arrive at a unanimous conclusion. Some ways to improve team collaboration are celebrating team success, encouraging an environment where every employee can freely state their opinions, and showing empathy. 

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Effective Conflict Resolution 

As mentioned earlier, conflicts are bound to happen in the workplace no matter how good the teamwork and environment of the employees is. So, the best way is to create an effective conflict resolution strategy to ensure the process is fair, constructive, and intelligent. Conflict resolution involves hearing different perspectives and then aligning the conclusions in a way that may be unanimously accepted. Some ways to counter conflict resolution are to encourage active listening, use ‘i’ statements, and seek common ground.

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Enhanced Decision-Making 

Having emotional Intelligence also helps a person develop enhanced decision-making skills. In the workplace, one always faces situations where one has to evaluate several options and select the most appropriate one. And this process requires them to make decisions not based on emotions but on rationale and logic. Some ways to enhance the decision are working on recognizing and controlling emotional triggers, relying on logic and rationale, and being open to feedback and criticism.

The onus for improved emotional intelligence is not just related to improving workplace dynamics but also shows several other advantages that can be quantified. Over the years, several studies have shown a correlation between increased revenues in companies that focused on employees with good EQ and increased revenues in companies that did not.

A study by TalentSmart found that 90 per cent of the top performers in a workplace exhibited high Emotional Intelligence. Another study by the Journal of Organizational Behavior stated that companies with better emotional Intelligence saw a 20 per cent increase in growth. 

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When it comes to profitability and productivity, a study by Gallup linked high Emotional Intelligence to an increase in profitability by 21 per cent and in productivity by 17 per cent.

A study by Hay Group also stated that employees with high emotional Intelligence saw a decrease in turnover rate by 63 per cent. This directly helps increase revenues and reduce hiring costs.

While emotional Intelligence is an important asset to check while hiring a candidate, companies also have several other boxes to tick. This is where using Artificial intelligence-backed tools such as BarRaiser can help a company up its game.

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With BarRaiser, recruiters can create a detailed interview plan for candidates. The interviewer can give specific instructions to our AI bot to create an interview, such as:

• The questions for the interview 
• The number of rounds for the interview 
• The duration of the interview and its specific sub-parts 
• The number of parts that the interview must be divided into and their durations 
• Must have questions 
• The number of experience required for the job posting 
• Must have skills
• Additional Skills 

Using these instructions, our tool will create a structured interview format to ensure an unbiased candidate selection process.

After this, our AI Interview Copilot assists the interviewer by giving them specific instructions. For example, if the interview exceeds the time limit, the AI bot will alert the recruiter to speed up the process. We are also committed to making our process as unbiased as possible. This is why our AI transcribes and records every interview and immediately raises an alert if the recruiter uses language that might be considered discriminatory to the candidate. 

After the interview, the AI asks for a detailed review of the candidate from the interviewer. We believe that our tool is an assistant and not the decision maker, so it formulates answers only after receiving instructions from the interviewer. While this is happening, the AI is also creating another report that measures the recruiter’s effectiveness and their performance. This report acts as a check and balance to ensure accountability for every stakeholder involved in the recruitment process.Using BarRaiser, we guarantee quality hiring that will bolster diversity and inclusion. BarRaiser is the best AI interview platform, featuring structured interviews and tools to ensure quality hiring while eliminating recruitment bias. With BarRaiser’s support, you’ll be well-equipped to build a strong team of sales associates who will drive sales and deliver exceptional customer service.